by Joe Zieja
“How do you like our establishment?” the smoky-skinned woman said.
“Not what I expected,” Rogers said.
“That’s why it’s kept secret. We spend all this time keeping up this image of being rough-and-tough bruisers, ready to slit anyone’s throat at a moment’s notice for a little taste of booty, but sometimes we just want microsuede cushions and a warm blanket.”
“You know, I kind of understand that,” Rogers said, nodding. There had been many times when he’d wanted to put aside all of his duties and snuggle into something warm and soft. He’d wanted to do it with a bottle of Jasker, of course, but there was at least some crossover.
Everyone was quiet for a moment. Despite Rogers saying that he would take the lead, he still wasn’t exactly sure what to do with the lead once he took it. Eyes darted around the room and among each other; nobody in the establishment seemed to notice or care about the newcomers, and nobody in his party seemed to want to talk first. He shot a look at the Viking, who shrugged, and then at Tunger, who grinned and appeared to not understand what was going on around him, and then at Mailn. She was the one who had magically known about this place.
After holding his gaze for a few moments, Mailn sighed.
“Alright, alright,” she said. “Everyone, this is Sjana. My wife.”
“What?” Rogers barked.
“What?” the Viking barked.
“Hey, that’s another jinx,” Rogers said. “We need to—”
“Congratulations!” said Tunger, clapping. “That’s wonderful news. Will there be a reception? Oh, I hope there are so many flowers. I can bring the doves, and—”
“We’ve been married for four years,” Mailn said. “It’s complicated.”
For the first time, Rogers looked at the pirate, Sjana, and noticed that under the brim of her wide hat she was also sporting a black eye.
“Aw,” he said, pointing at her eye and starting to understand. “You match. I see it’s going well?”
“That’s not funny,” Mailn muttered, but Sjana chuckled a little.
“I am Sjana Devingo,” she said, the traces of some kind of accent dancing across her voice. She held out a hand to Rogers. “I am the captain of the Africanus, and somewhat of a boss around here. Cynthia told me you wanted to talk to whoever was in charge, and I’m the closest thing.”
“I’m Captain Rogers, Meridan Galactic Navy,” Rogers said, shaking her hand. “I’m in way over my head and really just want a drink.”
Sjana laughed again, a carefree, easy laugh that gave Rogers the impression that she didn’t worry about too much in life. “An honest man. You won’t fit in here.”
Rogers shrugged. “I’ve worked with the Purveyors and the Garliali before.”
“I know,” Sjana said, her face turning bleak. “That was a dark day. We all thought that would be the end of them.”
Rogers raised an eyebrow. “I thought it was.”
“Things are rarely that cut and dry, especially when pirates are involved,” Sjana said.
She motioned for them all to follow her. Rogers and the Viking exchanged glances, but neither of them said anything. Tunger was busy relaxing into a beanbag chair and hugging what appeared to be a grumpy-looking teddy bear with a purple cape. When Rogers gave him his patented “Are you serious?” look, Tunger jumped up, tucked the teddy bear in, and followed them as well.
“How come you never told me you were married to a pirate captain?” Rogers whispered, leaning over to Mailn.
“Not the kind of thing you disclose on your security paperwork if you want to continue enlistment.”
“That’s illegal, you know,” Rogers said.
Mailn shrugged. “So is pirating, but here we are.”
Rogers could tell when he was starting to push too far even when joking with a friend, and that point was rapidly approaching with Mailn. He decided to let the issue go, for now. The Viking obviously knew about all this, which explained why she had been so reluctant to let Mailn come planetside with them. In truth, though, a couple of black eyes wasn’t that bad. The Viking could be kind of overprotective, Rogers guessed. He kind of wished she’d lord over him more.
Sjana led them past the bar—which Rogers realized was serving mostly fine herbal teas and not alcohol—and through a doorway that led to another hallway. This place must have cost a fortune in rent, and half the damn square footage was hallways down which Rogers was apparently going to be led until he died.
Turning abruptly, the pirate captain opened a door and led everyone into a room filled with smoke and the smell of alcohol—much more like what Rogers would expect from a pirating den. Pirates had a flair for the old world, and the room had been decorated with all sorts of old paraphernalia, from sailing-ship wheels, to mermaid statues, to a small-scale replica of a hatchhunter, a cannon-like device that fired breaching charges at the end of a tube, through which a crew could walk to board a ship.
An old, round table sat in the middle of the room, supported by mismatched legs and a healthy bunch of napkins stuffed underneath the feet to keep it from rocking too much. Sjana indicated that Rogers was to take a seat at one of the two chairs, and Rogers obliged. The rest of his crew remained standing, tense and on guard, except for Tunger, who immediately began walking around the room cooing at the various things on display.
Sjana took a seat as well, throwing one arm over the back of it and somehow making a stiff wooden chair look like an old recliner.
“Cynthia has already told me a bit about what you’re trying to do,” Sjana said.
Rogers nodded. “So you’re aware how both insane and stupid all of this is.”
“And you, therefore, must be aware of how much I expect to be paid for all of this.”
Without committing, Rogers tapped a couple of fingers on the table.
“You’re sure you have the guns to make it worth it?”
“Captain Rogers,” Sjana said, “I could lie straight to your face and tell you I have two thousand dreadnought battle cruisers ready to go, and you’d have to believe me. The navy is at a bit of a negotiating disadvantage here.”
Rogers snorted. “There’s a difference between being desperate and being dead. If the Jupes win, you’ll be both.”
“That’s not a possible state of being, sir,” Tunger said.
“Shut up, Tunger.”
“And what makes you think we haven’t already made deals with the Jupiterians?” Sjana asked.
“Because if you had, you wouldn’t all be sipping tea while the Jupes got caught sitting on their heels and setting up blockades instead of taking territory. It’s pretty obvious they went off half-cocked and are paying for it. Lucky for us.” He pointed at Sjana. “And lucky for your bank accounts.”
Sjana let a small smile sit on her lips.
“Look,” Rogers said. “I know that pirates tend to stay out of the government unless they’re stealing from it, but you have to realize how different this situation is.”
“Pirates don’t work for charity,” Sjana said.
“That’s what I told my boss, and that’s why I’m not here asking for charity. I’m asking what you want in exchange for paving the way to Snaggardir’s HQ.”
Leaning back even farther in her chair—something that Rogers didn’t think was possible, given how casual she already looked at the negotiating table—Sjana stared straight at him for a moment. For all Rogers knew, she could have been about to draw her pistol and shoot him in the face.
“We want complete and total amnesty and all of our records expunged. We want license to loot any Jupiterian craft that we are able to without legal repercussion, and we want compensation for any resources we lose in the process.”
Rogers nearly laughed out loud. That was a huge amount of stuff, almost none of which was in Rogers’ power to grant. Compensation for lost resources? The whole galaxy might be a lost resource without the pirates’ help. Then again, pirates had an uncanny ability to lay low during times of trouble, so it w
as possible that they could hide, survive, and then become active again after the dust settled. Unlike the system governments, the pirates weren’t facing extinction here.
“What?” the Viking growled. “Are you serious?”
“Hang on,” Rogers interrupted. He turned back to Sjana. “Why the amnesty? You’ll just go back to breaking galactic law after the war is over.”
Sjana shrugged. “It’s not a foregone conclusion that everyone who is currently pirating will continue pirating. Snaggardir’s is a very rich company, with very rich ships. If this works out, many pirates will be able to slip into an easy retirement, made much easier if they don’t have bounty hunters chasing them all around the galaxy.”
Rogers thought for a moment. In no way did Rogers have any legal authority here, nor could he enforce any of the terms that Sjana was asking for. If they were ever fighting in the same sector, Rogers could certainly order his fleet to not shoot the pirates if they did a bit of plunder, but he certainly couldn’t make any other commanders in any other fleets do the same thing. It was absolutely insane for Rogers to say that was a done deal.
“It’s a done deal,” Rogers said. He was a frigging expert at promising things he couldn’t really deliver. It was half the game of poker. And when this was all said and done, it wouldn’t matter if the Jupiterians came out on top. “When can you start?”
Sjana frowned. “Captain Rogers, you disappoint me.”
Rogers nodded. “I do this very often to a great many people.”
“I thought you were familiar with dealing with pirates?”
“I am,” Rogers said.
“So you should know very well that we always end a deal the same way.” She leaned forward, a mischievous and almost insane look in her eye.
Rogers understood now, and he got a similar feeling. He leaned forward as well, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. Then, at the same time, both of them shouted:
“We drink!”
• • •
Lucinda really wished she hadn’t found out what the “construction” was all about.
She’d learned a lot about ethical conflicts when getting her business degrees, but the topics typically focused on things like conflicts of interest and tax evasion. When it came to things like intentionally destroying an entire galaxy, and possibly the entire human race, there was maybe like one line somewhere in the back of one book.
She stared at the report on her datapad, feeling like she’d just swallowed a whole fish without chewing or cooking it.
That’s a really strange analogy, she thought, but it somehow fit. Her insides felt bloated and full, her lungs really unable to breathe, and the whole thing wriggled inside her.
It must have been forwarded to her by mistake, but that seemed a monumental administrative oversight on someone’s part. It was addressed to Mr. Snaggardir, and the “from” line said it was from Dr. Mattic, but for some reason it was sitting here in Lucinda’s inbox like the most doomsday piece of spam she’d ever received in her life.
This wasn’t just a construction project; it was a megalomaniacal, diabolical piece of galaxy-destroying equipment that was at once both devious and ironic. The plans, modeled after the terraforming technology that had caused the entire Milky Way to collapse, detailed a method by which to hold the entire Fortuna Stultus galaxy hostage.
It was evil.
“Pure evil.”
Lucinda whirled, nearly dropping her datapad in the process. She’d received the message in the middle of the hallway on her way to a meeting, but the implications had forced her to stop in her tracks. She hadn’t seen Mr. Snaggardir approaching at all.
She felt the blood drain from her face, her lips trembling. If Mr. Snaggardir knew that she knew the full scope of their plans, she would become a liability faster than you could say “Please kill Lucinda and fire her out the airlock, thank you.”
“That must be what you’re thinking, yes?” Mr. Snaggardir, his hands behind his back, gave her a rare, kind smile. The genuineness of it threw her off; she expected a knife in her chest any second now.
“I, uh,” Lucinda said, looking around her. The hallways were empty. They’d called the meeting extremely early in the morning, station time, and Snaggardir’s corporate headquarters wasn’t a full-time outfit. They still worked bankers’ hours. Signs of life were trickling into her awareness in the form of far-off footsteps and muffled conversations, but for the moment they were alone.
“It’s alright,” Mr. Snaggardir said. “I sent it to you on purpose.”
“You what?” Lucinda said. “But this is . . . this is . . .”
“Necessary,” Mr. Snaggardir said. “I didn’t think so at first, either, but . . .”
He trailed off, his weathered face scrunching up. Old, watery eyes looked beyond her down the empty hallway as if searching for something not in this plane of existence. Maybe in another plane of existence. Where wholesale murder of the human race seemed like a reasonable option.
“Will you walk with me for a moment, Ms. Hiri?”
Lucinda nodded dumbly, her mouth unable to form words. Without unclasping his hands, or waiting for any further response, Mr. Snaggardir took off at a leisurely pace down the hallway.
Snaggardir corporate headquarters was truly a marvel of space engineering. Even though Lucinda had been here for almost half a year now, walking through it always inspired a sense of wonder that helped wipe away any doubts she had about working for such a large, bureaucratic company. With so many years of spacefaring already baked into human history, it was only natural that they’d found ways to adapt, but Snaggardir’s headquarters was on a completely different level. If one took the right path through the station, it would be easy to confuse one’s location for some of the most beautiful places in Fortuna Stultus. Deep jungles, beautiful beaches, volcanic landscapes . . . all of them could be found, either via very unique biosphere configurations or holographic projections that could fool even the most discerning zoologist.
Right now, though, it wasn’t doing much to soothe her. After all, what would be the point of this beauty if they were just going to blow it all up?
“I can understand that, not being Jupiterian born, you might not understand what we are going through here,” Mr. Snaggardir said as casually as if he was talking about the weather. The sinking feeling that she was about to be pushed out an airlock subsided a touch.
“That’s . . . true,” Lucinda said.
“I can’t provide you with any analogy that is fitting,” he said. “I can’t describe to you what it feels like to have your heritage erased from the history books and forced to assimilate itself into . . . lesser cultures.”
He said the phrase “lesser cultures” with only the slightest of sneers, but it took Lucinda by surprise. There was a heavy arrogance behind that statement that Lucinda was not used to hearing from the calm, calculating man.
“What happened to Jupiter was wrong,” Lucinda said. Even though they had, despite the warnings and protestations of every other planet in the solar system, continued their scientific terraforming experiments. Certainly all of Jupiter couldn’t have been blamed for that mistake, though.
Mr. Snaggardir looked at her and smiled through cold eyes. “I’m glad you feel that way, though I am not naive enough to think you mean it with the utmost sincerity. The human race and its history are so very, very complicated.”
Drawing in a long breath, Mr. Snaggardir let out a ragged sigh that devolved into a coughing fit. It didn’t last very long, however, and soon, with a quick wipe of his mouth, he was back to the sage lecturer.
“I know you feel like you probably didn’t sign up for this.”
The understatement of the century, Lucinda thought.
“That doesn’t mean I can’t adapt, sir,” Lucinda said. Damn it, she was reverting to interview mode. She’d done so many of them that, whenever she was under pressure, she tended to start giving canned interview answers. “I guess you could say if I had one
flaw, it’s that I’m a workaholic.”
Nodding sagely, Mr. Snaggardir turned a corner to lead them toward the meeting room. Undoubtedly, General Szinder, Ms. Alshazari, and Dr. Mattic would be waiting for them to calmly discuss the construction of the . . . thing.
“Did you really need to call it the Galaxy Eater, though?” Lucinda blurted. “I mean, if you’re going to posture yourselves as restoring order to the galaxy by getting rev . . . I mean, by restoring Jupiter to its rightful place as a participant, you could have at least called it something ambiguous.”
She clapped a hand over her mouth. Babbling streams of contradiction at her boss was not her typical modus operandi. Still, the name was ridiculous. It was written in big, bold letters at the top of the report. Galaxy Eater. Great.
Mr. Snaggardir chuckled. “That was Gerd’s idea,” he said, referring to General Szinder. “He has a flare for the dramatic. Didn’t fit in very well in the Thelicosan military before the revolution.”
He said “before the revolution” like it had happened a hundred years ago, like a Jupiterian victory was already assured, achieved, and relegated to the history books. For the first time in her short career, Lucinda was starting to feel her skin crawl around Mr. Snaggardir. She’d felt nervous, yes, but never . . . scared.
Maybe it was the fear, or the idea that the entire galaxy was about to collapse . . . again . . . but Lucinda felt like if she didn’t speak up now, she’d never forgive herself.
“But, sir,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s a little excessive? The entire galaxy can’t be to blame for what happened to Jupiter any more than all Jupiterians being blamed for the Milky Way’s collapse. There has to be some other way.”
Sal Snaggardir stopped in the middle of the hallway and rounded on her with a speed that she hadn’t thought could come from the old man’s bones. He loomed over her, his face still not breaking from his soft smile.
“There is no other way.”
“For what?” a voice sang out from behind them.
Lucinda, still rooted to the spot by Mr. Snaggardir’s piercing glare, couldn’t bring herself to turn around. Distantly, she recognized the voice of Snaggardir’s itself, Sara Alshazari. Even in the headquarters station, she was constantly subjected to barrages of Sara congratulating her for trivial tasks and awarding her free Snaggardir’s goods.
