by Blaze Ward
Part Three
Javier wasn’t asleep.
He had bathed in the sink and then cat–napped and meditated for several hours. Homicidal tendencies had been pushed well to the back of his mind.
For now.
Not forgotten.
He wasn’t that person, any more. They wouldn’t make him go back there. Not today.
Escape was primary. Vengeance could come later. But first he had to survive.
A knock at the doorway brought him to the surface. “Javier?” It was Machinist’s Mate Yu.
Javier cracked an eye, saw a shadow outside the force field. The cell was dim enough that he was almost invisible on the bed. He started flexing muscles to loosen everything up without visible motion. Sykora was not to be seen.
“Javier,” Yu called again, louder. “Time to wake up. Captain wants to see you.”
That got the eyes open. For the briefest moment, Javier considered overpowering the slim man and making a break for it, but there was nowhere to go. He was a week’s sail to get to anyplace civilized from here, and no boat. Survival first. Still, it was Yu and not Sykora. Silver linings.
Javier climbed off the bed slowly. “Yeah, Ilan,” he called, “I’m coming.” He stretched everything as he approached the force field. He sighed, mostly due to lack of tea to kick–start his morning. That and freshly–pulled honey made things much nicer in deep space.
Yu shut off the force field with a smile. “Ready?”
Javier looked at him sidelong for a moment. “No manacles?” he asked.
Yu grinned and shook his head. “Captain said to ask real nice and you’d probably behave,” he said simply.
Javier felt a chill at the bottom of his stomach. Pirates didn’t act like this, not even the romantic ones in the movies. They were cut–throat professional businessmen.
They wanted something.
Ξ
Javier followed Yu to the Captain’s office and watched him knock. The door slid sideways on silent pneumatics. Javier followed Yu into the room.
Captain Sokolov was at his desk, like before. He looked exactly like a ship’s captain was supposed to, according to all the movies. He still had that charisma–thing captains were supposed to have. Javier had never gotten the hang of it. It probably helped to actually like people.
Sykora had apparently decided to get dressed up this morning. She was wearing a Neu Berne Field Combat Uniform. Considering her size and mass, it was probably custom tailored. Certainly freshly pressed. It came with a pistol and a short saber. Probably for effect. Probably.
Nobody else was in the room.
Captain Sokolov smiled warmly at Javier and gestured to the seat. “Please, Javier,” he said amiably, “have a seat. Yu, don’t go far. I’ll want to talk to you after this.”
Yu did something that approximated a salute in some cultures and skedaddled.
Javier took a long moment to size up Sykora. Not that he intended to do anything stupid. Here, anyway. Mostly just to remind himself not to be intimidated by the giantess with the quick fists. He sat and eyed Captain Sokolov closely. “Captain.”
A long moment passed as the two men judged each other.
Sokolov took a drink from his steaming mug. “I woke up this morning,” he began, “and my head felt better.” He sipped and watched Javier for a response.
Javier blinked once.
The Captain plowed on. “I wanted to say thank you.”
Javier nodded. Still not willing to commit. Something about lack of a shower and hot meal and morning tea and still horribly smelly air caused his manners to be atrocious this morning.
Sokolov seemed to understand. “So now I have a conundrum.”
Javier resisted speaking some more. Sykora in dress uniform might mean she wanted to make nice, and it might be appropriate for an execution. Neu Berne troopers tended to be sticklers for details. He glanced up at her, lingered, returned. She scowled professionally back.
“I spoke with Dragoon Sykora,” Sokolov continued, “and she tells me you handled the bio–scrubber rebuild very professionally, including showing Yu how to fabricate a bypass for a burned out number six lead.”
Curiosity got the better of him. “Why can’t your Engineer keep those systems running?” Javier asked in the pause.
He was rewarded with Sokolov’s awkward glance at Sykora and a deep breath to compose his thoughts. “Dalca is a mid–functioning introvert,” he said, pausing to think.
Javier cocked his head. “So are lots of engineers,” he replied. “That’s why they become engineers in the first place.”
Sokolov nodded. “Correct,” he said, “and she’s quite good. However…”
Javier waited.
“Apparently,” Sokolov continued, “the bio–scrubber bit her.”
“Bit her?” Javier repeated. Understanding dawned. “Ah. So now she won’t touch it.”
Javier had never gotten anyone to explain it to him better than that. Something bad had happened to them with a particular piece of machinery, it had bit them, and they would develop what was, to an extrovert like him, a total neurosis. Introverts made great engineers, most of the time. This was the drawback.
Sokolov nodded sagely. “Exactly. I can’t exactly requisition new Machinist’s Mates out here, and she can’t train people.”
Javier smiled evilly. “Good luck then, Captain.”
“Which brings me,” Sokolov said, “to you.”
Javier felt a chill go up his spine. He felt Sykora’s smile without looking over.
Javier blinked.
Sokolov at least had the decency to look pained at the words coming out of his mouth. “Normally,” he began, “I would sell you off as inmate labor on one of the mining colonies we work with occasionally.” A pause to sip at his coffee, reading Javier’ face. “In your case, maybe one of the farming worlds where your expertise with plants and animals might be handy.”
A long pause. Javier refused to rise to the bait. He wasn’t about to let the Captain off his own hook.
“Depending on circumstances and timing,” Sokolov finally continued in the silence, “you would be worth twenty–five hundred to three thousand credits to me from such a transaction. I would like to talk to you about honor.”
Javier almost snorted out loud. Or sputtered. Hard to tell. Certainly, this was the moment in the movies where someone did a spit–take all over someone else. He drew a breath, careful about how close to the edge he probably was right now. “A pirate, talking honor?”
Sokolov got a very hard look on his face. Captain’s Face. “I’m talking about two Academy men under awkward circumstances. And it’s not about my honor. It’s about yours.”
Javier leaned back in his chair, suddenly aware how far forward he had been leaning. A slap might have been less surprising. Well, maybe not, considering Sykora’s penchant for mild physical violence. “Mine. Mine?”
“Yours,” Sokolov pronounced. “I would like to offer you a deal.”
Javier would have liked to have not gotten out of bed this morning. Nothing that had happened had improved that notion. “A deal?”
Sokolov waited for more. None was forthcoming.
“My crew,” the Captain began, “are paid reasonable wages. For a ship that wanders on both sides of legality, we do well. I would like to offer you a contract of indenture against your honor. Your ransom, if you will, as an officer and a gentleman. I will value you at twenty–five hundred credits. As a First–Rate–Spacer, you could pay off that debt in seven years as a member of this crew, and then would be free to go.”
Javier resisted goggling. Barely. Definitely not what he had planned when he got up this morning. He remembered to breathe. And decided to push his luck. It was what he did best, anyway. Just ask his ex–wives. “What about your Centurions? What do they make?”
Sokolov blinked, slightly taken aback. “My Centurions,” he nodded to Sykora as an example, “profit–share.” Javier watched him juggle numbers in his he
ad. “In your case, roughly four years, less if we had a big score.”
Javier leaned well back into the chair and thought. Lose, lose, and lose. Be a corpse, be a slave, be a pirate. At least pirates dressed well. Maybe he could ask for a fancy sash. You never knew when you’d need a fancy sash. And, worse come to worst, he could sabotage the ship and blow the whole thing to hell if they pushed him far enough. Make the universe a better place.
Javier leaned forward, mentally flipped a coin. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would be proud. “I have met your Dragoon and your Engineer,” he began. “I presume you have a Gunner, a Boatswain, and a Purser. And the medbay is automated enough that you don’t need a Surgeon. You could hire me as your Science Officer.” Heads.
He watched Sokolov do mental gymnastics. The man did sputter, but he wasn’t used to dealing with Javier. He would learn. Or not.
Javier waited.
“Why in the world,” the Captain finally said, “would a pirate vessel need a Science Officer?”
Javier smiled. “Why, indeed?”
Ξ
Captain Zakhar Sokolov, Commanding Officer of the private–service Strike Corvette Storm Gauntlet, Concord Fleet career veteran, and pirate extraordinaire, looked down into his mug of coffee as if he could read the future on the dregs contained therein. Apparently, he had hired himself a Science Officer.
And it had been Aritza.
He wasn’t sure if that was the smartest thing he had ever done, or the dumbest.
Certainly, a free–lance vessel like his needed every edge he could give it. Would this sarcastic fast–talker be a boon or a bramble? Only time would tell.
He took a deep breath as Sykora returned from escorting Aritza into the hall. The hatch whispered closed.
They held eyes for a few moments, before she shrugged and looked down.
“Yu,” he said into the long quiet, “is not sneaky enough to keep a close watch on that man, so I’ll settle for regular reports from the rest of the crew.”
Djamila Sykora, Dragoon of the pirate vessel Storm Gauntlet, combat veteran of ground, sea, and space; giantess; and recreational knitter, came to parade rest just inside the closed door. “I can get close to him,” she replied, perhaps a touch defensive.
Zakhar cocked his head and grinned. “Djamila,” he began, “the first time you met, you shot him. The second time, according to the reports, you beat him up and gave him a concussion. Then you worked him for seven hours fixing the bio–scrubber before throwing him back into the brig.” He grinned a little as he paused to take a sip. “If he were a horse, we’d call that riding him hard and putting him away wet. Plus, I’ve seen the gleam he gets in his eye when he looks at you.”
He watched her square her massive shoulders up a little tighter. “I can take him,” she said.
“Djamila,” the Captain replied, “he’s not going to warn you it’s coming.”
She thought about it and smiled brittlely. “So what do we do?”
Sokolov considered his options. “You and the crew treat him like any other Centurion. And keep a close tab. I didn’t promise not to kill him.”
He watched her salute, pivot, and exit with all the professionalism he had come to expect from her.
He had a good crew. Would it be enough?
BOOK TWO: SHIPWRECK
Part One
Javier stood in the pirate ship’s cavernous cargo bay and considered the possibilities. Torpedoes were big, expensive, and hard to acquire in private practice. Sokolov had reduced the eighty launch silos on E and F decks to twelve tubes forward, six on each side. Only seven were loaded, anyway.
The remaining space had been opened up for cargo storage, spanned by the original trestles and frames, plus a small flight deck containing a battered transport tug that had started life in the Daxing Navy a century ago as an assault shuttle.
Sokolov had been true to his threats. Mielikki had been cut into sections and parted out. She had been too customized and automated to reprogram in less than a year and a half anyway, even if they did have someone on crew to do it. Javier certainly wasn’t about to help. Whole frames of the little vessel had been cut away to get to the engines, sensors, and jump drives, so they could be unceremoniously pulled aboard Storm Gauntlet and stored.
Somehow, however, Javier had convinced the pirates to protect the cargo sections of Mielikki containing the arboretum and botany station. It had been wrapped up, insulated, cut out like a plum’s stone from Mielikki’s carcass, and brought onto the flight deck. Sokolov had even turned off all the gravity plates in the rear half of the corvette so the crew could slide it forward into the foremost port cargo space and link it in to ship’s power and the water system. In a couple of weeks, after some more tuning of the life support generators and the bio–scrubbers, he might even connect the hydroponics section externally and let his fish clean the ship’s water.
Let them drink fish poop. It would still be an improvement.
Javier keyed the security lock and stepped into his sanctum. Provisional Machinist’s Mate Ilan Yu, now his aide, bodyguard, and minder, was close behind.
Inside, Yu grabbed his elbow suddenly. “Are those real cherries?” he asked, wonder in his voice.
Javier smiled as he pulled the primary bin of chicken feed from the shelf. “They are,” he replied.
“What are you going to do with them?”
The reality of the situation hit. Javier scowled and shrugged. “When it was just me,” he said, “I’d have eaten half and made cherry wine with the rest.” When he didn’t have any master but boredom. And chickens.
“Really,” Yu asked. “Cherry wine? That’s a thing?”
Javier sighed, quietly, mostly to himself. People, again. It was almost as bad as his Fleet days. “It’s like this, Ilan. Fresh fruit lasts for days. Dried fruit lasts for weeks. Canned fruit lasts for months. But fermented fruit will last for years.”
The tall, skinny, Asian guy lit up. “Really? That’s cool. So can we make some?”
Javier shook his head. “Afraid not,” he said. “These sixteen little gems are going to the Officer’s Wardroom as a treat. Make that fifteen. This one looks bad.” Javier picked a red and gold orb the size of a large marble from a branch and inspected its perfection.
He handed it to Yu. “You should eat this one and make sure it hasn’t been ruined or something.” He had a mock–serious smile on this face.
Yu took the cherry from him with reverence due a priceless religious artifact. “Wow. Thanks.”
Javier had his first smile of the day. Or maybe the week. Hard to tell. “Bite slowly, Ilan,” he said. “It has a pit in the middle, a little stone. It can damage your teeth, and your teeth can damage the seed. I want to keep it, plant it and grow more.”
Yu ate his first ever Rainer cherry with a look of pure ecstasy.
While Yu was distracted, Javier cracked open the bin of chicken feed and rooted around until he found the chip containing Suvi. Good, she was still safe. Nowhere to go, now that her ship had been dismembered, but at least she had survived. He pushed her to the bottom of the bin and pulled out the measuring cup, filled with seeds and vitamins.
In the next space, they found four emotionally–damaged chickens rooting hungrily in the vegetable patch. The first toss of grain brought them all close, angrily scolding him, and each other, and the grass, and everything else.
They were chickens.
Ξ
Javier watched Yu sit down across the table from him and slide his lunch tray into the locks to keep it in place. He felt talked out, after three hours.
Yu was irrepressible. “So, Javier,” he paused, an embarrassed look on his face. “Wait, I’m supposed to call you Mr. Aritza in public. You’re a Centurion, now.”
Javier sighed. This was why he was a civilian now. Stupid, petty rules. “Ilan, call me whatever you want. I’m pretty sure Sykora will slip up and call me shit–head at some point. I’ll probably answer.”
Yu shrugged. “Ca
ptain runs a tight ship,” he said.
That kind of ended the conversation. Javier called it a tie and went back to his extruded protein sludge that the mess computer called pudding. His recipe was better, but he used real beets for sugar, instead of cracked industrial chemicals. In about twelve days, he’d have a batch of golden beets ready for harvest. Then he’d show them.
Across the way, he watched another crewmember add his name to the lottery drawing. Every day, the computer randomly selected a crewman from the list to have fresh eggs for breakfast. It messed up Javier’s morning routine, but what he was eating was close enough to fleet food, and it would make the crew much more well–disposed to the new officer.
“So, Ilan,” Javier scraped the bottom of the bowl with his spoon. Not bad. Not as good as he could do, but about normal for a fleet vessel, which was pretty good for a pirate. “What’s on your mind?’
Javier watched the ground between then start to open.
“Well, sir,” Yu said, now a crewman addressing a Centurion instead of two guys having lunch, “what’s a Science Officer actually do?” He sipped from a bulb of something. “I mean, besides raise chickens and vegetables and stuff.”
Javier thought about it for a moment. Two weeks had already passed. He was already falling back into Fleet routines.
Yuck.
“Today,” he said, “I’m going to calibrate the new sensor array they stripped off of my ship, off Mielikki. Engineering and Damage Control finally got everything wired two shifts ago.” Javier drank some tea, wincing at the taste. “Eventually, they’ll strip out your old ones and free up hull space.”
Yu was entranced. “Are they that much better than ours?”
Javier considered the launch dates of Storm Gauntlet and Mielikki. “Yu,” he smiled to take the sting out of the words. “Mielikki was a probe–cutter outfitted for survey work. My survey pod is probably six or eight times more powerful than yours. Storm Gauntlet is a warship. Shoot things and move on. I’m used to sitting on the edge of a system for two or three days, plotting the moons orbits for planets on the far side of a sun, before I jump closer.” He took another drink. “Much better.”
