by Jake Elwood
"I don't see any vapor out here," Liz reported.
"I think it's holding," Singh said, and grinned.
"Good work," Chan told him. "Let's bring it up to half an atmosphere."
Five minutes at half pressure was enough to reassure him that the welds would hold. He nodded to Singh and watched the man's suit collapse inward as the air pressure rose to a full atmosphere. Frost appeared on every surface, melting quickly from their faceplates, growing thick on the deck plates and bulkheads.
"It's a bit chilly," said Vogel, wiping his glove across a bulkhead and starting a miniature snowstorm. "Do you think we can get some power?"
Chan sat at a console, the magnets on his boots keeping him in place, and cleared the frost from a panel. Everything was dark. Well, that was no surprise. Still, a glowing "ON" button would have been nice.
Singh rotated until his feet pointed at the ceiling and peered under a console. He traced some cables along a bulkhead and down the central corridor, then pulled open a panel and tinkered with the machinery inside. Chan could hear him muttering to himself as he worked. The murmurs trailed off and he said, "I think I can get the battery backups working. Hang on."
"I'll leave you to it. Vogel, give him a hand." Chan walked to the front of the bridge and peered through the narrow strips of glass that remained on either side of the patch. There were smears of glue on the glass, but he could see enough to help guide Liz as she nudged the lifeboat closer and closer. Finally the ship trembled and the hull gave a low "bong" as the Albatross bumped gently into the docking ring above the bridge. Chan kicked himself loose from the deck plates, floating up to open the hatch from his side. Then he pushed himself back to the deck as Liz came floating through feet-first.
"I suppose this place smells like the Albatross now," she said. "I should have cycled the lock." She stared around, playing her helmet light across the bridge. "Nice ship." Her light hit the hull plate welded over the hole and stopped. "Even with the patch. Can we keep it?"
Chan grinned in spite of himself. It felt wrong to profit from someone else's cold and lingering death, but they'd been pirates, after all. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I believe we'll keep it."
Chapter 2
Singh and Vogel had left the bridge and were tinkering somewhere aft. Chan knew they had fixed the power when the lights came on, not at full strength but bright enough that the helmet lights shut themselves off. An eddy of dust told Chan that the air was circulating. He watched as the frost slowly shrank and disappeared from the walls and even his own suit. The ship still had to be bitterly cold, but he couldn't help himself. He unsnapped his helmet and took it off.
The cold burned his throat and lungs. He could feel it sharp against the edges of his ears, and he thought about putting his helmet back on. The novelty of comparatively fresh air was too much to resist, though. He sniffed, smelling dust and metal and burned plastic. He could hear the hum of the ship and the clank of boot magnets on metal.
There was something else, too. He heard the sibilant rustle of a pocket door retracting and turned, looking down the corridor, wondering what Vogel or Singh was getting into.
Vogel's shout was a muffled noise that Chan heard distantly through the earpiece in the helmet in his hands. A burly shape erupted from the doorway beside Vogel, slamming into him and knocking his boots loose from the deck plates. The shape rebounded expertly, bumping the wall and coming to a stop floating in the middle of the corridor.
It was a man. Chan was able to register that much. A man without a vac suit, wild-eyed and wild-haired, his face a bristling mass of tangled brown beard with gleams of white from his bared teeth and his wide, staring eyes. The sense of wildness was deepened by the blanket tied around his shoulders like a cape.
Then Chan saw the gun, and found himself unable to look at anything else. It was an energy pistol of some sort, hard yellow plastic with black trim, and the barrel was pointed directly between Chan's eyes. The man was drifting slightly in the air, turning with the last bits of momentum from his attack, but the barrel of the gun didn't waver.
"Nobody move." The man's voice was gravelly and rough, as if he hadn’t spoken in a few days. It was also tight with strain. "Anybody moves, and I'll kill you!"
"What did he say?" Singh's voice, faint and tinny, came from the helmet in Chan's hands.
"I don't know," Vogel replied. "I'm afraid to take my helmet off."
"Who are you people?" the man asked. Then, "Never mind. I don't care. I want you all off of my ship. Now!"
Chan nodded, relief flooding him. The man was going to let them leave. They would survive. He grinned, turned to Liz, and felt the grin freeze on his face.
There was no relief on her face, no fear. Just anger. No, fury. She was glaring at the gunman, her eyes more terrifying than the pistol.
"I don't take orders from pirates!" she snapped.
He responded by shifting his aim to her.
"You're scum," she said, completely undaunted. "Scum like you don't let witnesses go. The gun's empty, isn't it? You're facing four of us with an empty gun, and you're hoping you can bluff your way through. Well, it's not going to work."
The pirate straightened his arm, taking aim at the middle of her body. "Last chance," he said, his voice as cold as the air in the bridge.
Liz flexed her fingers. "You better put that gun away, little man," she said, "because I'm going to make you eat it."
She took a single step toward him, the clank of her boots echoing as the magnets let go, then reattached. And the pirate pulled the trigger. There was a flash of light, Liz shrieked, and Chan flinched, squeezing his eyes shut for an instant.
He opened them in time to see the pirate twist in the air and slam both feet into Vogel's chest. Vogel went tumbling down the corridor while the pirate, in complete control, sailed toward the bridge. He caught Liz by the shoulders to stop himself, and her limp body flopped backward. For an instant the pirate and Chan were eye to eye.
"I'm going to kill you," the man hissed. "I'm going to kill you all." The gun in his hand gave a low 'pop' and a spark flew to Chan's chest. It gave him a shock, enough that he flinched, nothing more. The pirate flung the pistol at him, and Chan ducked, blocking with his helmet. When he lowered the helmet the pirate was gone.
"I want my ship back." The man's voice had a strange echo, and Chan realized it was coming from the Albatross. "You haven't seen the last of me!"
For an instant Chan stared up at the hatch, frozen in indecision. He could swarm into the Albatross and face the pirate. The idea terrified him.
Both ships vibrated as the engines of the Albatross revved up, and Chan moved, kicking loose from the deck plates. He flew up, stopping himself against the ceiling of the bridge, and swung the hatch shut. He was barely in time. Metal squealed and the ship lurched as the Albatross tore itself free and thundered away.
Chan spent a moment locking the hatch, then let his muscles go limp. Something moved at the edge of his vision, and he tilted his head back, the breath catching in his throat as he saw Liz straightening up. A brief, bright surge of joy faded as he felt the ceiling of the bridge press against his knees. The Albatross as it tore loose had set the pirate ship spinning, and centrifugal force was pulling at Liz. Her lifeless body was hanging from the magnets that held her boots to the deck.
Snaps clicked somewhere behind Chan as someone removed a helmet. Then Vogel said, "Holy Hell, who was that guy?"
Chan made himself turn. Vogel was clumping down the corridor, helmet under his arm. "Are you all right?" Chan asked him.
Vogel nodded. "I wouldn't mind getting another crack at that guy. He caught me by surprise."
You haven't seen the last of me. "You may get your chance," Chan told him. "Let's hope you don't."
Someone groaned, a hoarse, dragging sound of extreme suffering, and Chan peered past Vogel at Singh, who was pulling his helmet off. "Singh! What's wrong with you?"
Singh gave him a blank look, and then Liz's voice, ragged with
pain, said, "I'm going to kill that miserable cockroach."
"Liz!" Chan knew from the way his cheeks hurt that he was grinning like an idiot, but he couldn't make himself stop. "You're alive!"
She nodded, grimacing. "I told you the pistol was empty. Well, practically empty. Vac me, that hurt." She rubbed her stomach through the suit, then held her arms above her head and stretched. "Everything seems to be functioning," she said. "Did he take the Albatross?"
Chan nodded.
"Well, good riddance. I guess we better get busy fixing this thing, then."
They made a tour of the ship, the four of them clustered together, Chan gripping the empty pistol in case he could use it to bluff. Vogel grabbed a wrench, and Liz had her fists. Singh opened doors one at a time, and they braced themselves each time, but no more pirates came bursting out.
It was a lovely ship, at least by the standards of the departed, unlamented Albatross. There were no fewer than six passenger cabins, each one with three or even three and a half glorious square metres of floor space and, incredibly, its own bathroom. The galley had an extensive freezer and a small cooler, and an oven with almost half a cubic metre of capacity.
The doors at the far end of the corridor opened on an engine room. Liz and Singh looked over the banks of controls and reported that the reactor was in working order with enough fuel to run the ship for at least another year. The automated systems had kept the reactor running safely in standby mode. Singh announced that it would keep for a while as he browsed the user manual. He wasn't going to bring up the power level until he was sure he knew what he was doing.
"Shouldn't take more than a few hours," he assured them. "These things are complicated to build, but they're dead easy to run."
The lights had gone dim and the cold was seeping back in when Chan felt the deck plates start to vibrate under his boots. The vibration never quite went away, but it was so constant that, before long, Chan couldn't feel it at all.
Singh brought the gravity up gently, giving everyone time to get their feet on the deck and to secure anything heavy or fragile. Force engines had revolutionized space flight. They could provide an artificial gravity of one g while the ship accelerated at a rate that in the old days would have reduced the crew to a red paste on the walls. Chan smiled happily. A ship with a working force engine! And it was all theirs!
The four of them gathered on the bridge. Liz sat at the helm station, grimacing as she leaned back against the charred and blistered chair where the pirate helmsman had died. She ran her hands over the controls, then pressed a couple of buttons and drew back on a joystick. There was nothing visible straight ahead, of course, not with the hatch of anther ship welded on as a patch. Chan walked to the edge of the patch and peered out through the narrow strip of glass.
The stars were reeling past, but their motion slowed as Liz stopped the ship from spinning. At last the stars were dead still and he turned, giving her a thumbs-up.
She brought the ship around in a sweeping curve, then swung in low over the ring, matching velocity with the tumbling chunks of ice. When the ship was stationary relative to the B Ring, she turned in her chair, grinning. "Everything seems to be working, Captain."
Singh was bent over another station, and he straightened up at her words. "Everything looks normal with the engine, Jim. I think she's space worthy and ready to go."
They were all looking at him, Chan realized. He'd been nominally in command since they'd left Coriolis Station, but it felt more real all of a sudden. He squared his shoulders. "Okay," he said. "The first order of business is to get out of the immediate neighborhood. That bastard who took the Albatross might have friends nearby and he for damn sure wants his ship back. So let's make sure we're not here when he arrives."
Liz nodded, her hands moving across the controls, and Chan marvelled at how he felt no movement at all as the ring started to race by beneath the ship.
"A couple of hundred thousand kilometres should do it," he said. "And bring us below the plane of the ring, but keep us in close. We know this ship is hard to spot."
She nodded.
"In the meantime, I have an assignment for you two, and myself." He ran his eyes over Vogel and Singh, and made a face. "We are a disgrace to this fine ship. As soon as enough water has heated up, I order showers all around. I don’t know about you guys, but I'm going to scrounge through the passenger cabins and find myself something clean to wear. I'm looking forward to getting out of this suit and not putting it back on for a good long time."
By unspoken consent the others left the biggest cabin for him. He felt vaguely embarrassed as he palmed the door open and stepped inside. Still, it was nice to be taken almost seriously as captain. Three short weeks before, he'd been crawling around inside water pipes in grimy, ill-fitting, company-issued coveralls, wondering how much longer he could stand it. And now he was… what exactly? Captain of a pirate ship? Leader of a band of misfits crowded together in a piece of stolen property, living out their final hours before the pirate leader tracked them down and exacted a bloody vengeance?
He felt himself grinning. He'd felt insignificant as a day laborer. Like the decisions he could make didn't matter. He'd felt like nothing. He wasn't sure quite what he was now, but he was something, and that was a big step up.
There was a bunk folded into the wall to maximize the floor area. He left it up, stripping off the vac suit and leaving it in a heap against one wall. He stood naked in the middle of the little room, scanning his new home, grinning like a kid who just got out of school.
Shallow drawers were set into the wall beneath the hinges of the bunk. He went through the drawers, relieved to find men's clothing. He hadn't thought to check before taking the room. Mostly it was plain jumpsuits, with one or two fine outfits, all of it wrinkled from being crammed into the tiny drawers.
For a long moment he just stared into the drawers, savoring the idea of actual clean clothing. Then he walked into the bathroom and wedged himself into the tiny shower.
The water was piping hot, and there was a spigot that gave shampoo. Chan whistled cheerfully while he lathered up, rinsed, lathered again, and kept repeating. When the water running from his body was clear he gave himself a final lather and rinse, then reluctantly turned the water off.
Jets of air dried him while he combed his hair with his fingers and peered into the tiny mirror over the sink. He really needed a shave. Still, he was looking better than he had in a long time.
Back in the bedroom he chose a pair of baggy blue underpants and pulled them on. The suit in the corner stank. He ignored it, sniffing, testing the air. There was a faint hint of ozone, and a peppery scent that might have belonged to the last pirate who'd lived here. Chan wrinkled his nose. Was that the faintest hint of rotting plants?
He lifted his hands to his nose and sniffed at his fingernails. The smell didn't get any stronger, and he started to think it was in his mind. The stench of sludge on Coriolis Station was part of him. It was no longer something he could just wash off. He'd spent too many days wading through the muck, watched too many dreams succumb and drown while he immersed himself in some of the foulest substances known to man.
Chan ran his eyes over the walls of the little cabin and murmured, "This is mine. Mine." It didn't feel like his, though. He felt like an intruder, ready to flee or grovel if the room's real owner showed up. He didn't belong in a captain's cabin. He belonged on the lowest ring of a dirty space station, shovelling up crap.
"I can do this," he murmured, looking around the cabin. "I can be a captain. I can make this mine." In front of the others he would act as if he believed it, but here, alone, it felt like a lie.
He thought about dressing, but a strange lethargy was dragging at his limbs. Part of it was being under gravity for the first time in weeks, but that wasn't all. He tried to remember how long he'd been awake. He couldn't figure it out, but it had been a good long time. He looked at the bunk, then at the drawers of clothes. Then at the bunk again. Finally he s
hrugged. The ship was hidden, there was nothing that needed to be done right away, and he would make better decisions if he was rested. He reached up and hit the release button on the bunk.
The bunk dropped, faster than he would have expected, and a figure erupted from it, hurtling straight at him. He tried to duck, a shoulder crashed into him, and he fell to the deck with a crushing weight on his chest.
Chapter 3
Through a fog of shock and pain he became aware of a pair of eyes staring into his own at a range of a few centimetres. He'd banged his head on either the bulkhead or the deck as he fell, and the face above him swam in and out of focus. The impact had driven the air out of his lungs, and with someone's weight on his chest he couldn't inhale, so the dizzy blur was only getting worse.
The memory of the pirate was fresh in his mind, and he lashed out blindly, feeling his fist connect with the side of someone's head. Then he pulled his heels up close to his buttocks and thrust upward, rising up on heels and shoulder blades, bending his body into an arc and propelling his attacker off of him and into the air.
There wasn't room to fly very far. The figure above him bounced from a bulkhead and landed back on top of him, but he managed to draw a ragged breath. A muffled curse came from his attacker, and slender hands went up to clutch the blurry head.
Chan took advantage of the opportunity to hammer his fists at the face above him. Arms blocked his blows, but the person tumbled backward, retreating. When the weight was gone he slid along the deck until his back was against the hatch, then pushed himself up into a crouch. He brought his arms up to protect his face, shook his head to clear it, and glared at the stowaway.
He was expecting another homicidal pirate, but it was a girl, no more than a teenager by the look of her, who crouched at the opposite end of the cabin, her arms curled protectively around her head. She was slender, almost frail, hardly big enough to have scared him half to death. She had sandy hair in a cloud around her head, and pale freckled skin on the arms that extended from the rolled-up sleeves of a jumpsuit that was much too big for her.
