The Star Pirate's Folly

by James Hanlon

  “You have no right to keep me here!” The big man’s voice shook with indignance.

  “Actually, we do,” Mallory said. “The Governor declared a state of emergency. Besides, if you’ve already reported her missing we’ve got people on it. There’s no sense putting yourself in danger. What do you think you’re going to do that our officers can’t?”

  “There were over three hundred other people on the list of missing and your officers are spread all over the city. I won’t just hide down here and hope someone else finds her!”

  Sergeant Mallory sighed at Hargrove’s refusal and with great reluctance said, “I’ll talk to my lieutenant.”

  ***

  Captain Gruce made short low leaps through the forest in his nullsuit, keeping below the treetops for cover. Twigs and branches snapped against his armor. The gravity nodes in his boots tugged him back to the ground so he didn’t hang in the air too long—the city’s guns had already sniped one of his armors. The moron made a flying jump high above the tree line, trying to catch up after falling behind.

  The hills provided them cover, obscuring them from view, but little protection from the instruments of death raining from the city. They leaped breakneck through the dense forest up the slope of the hill. Once they crested the top they’d be even more exposed. His men were used to operating in nullo, not on the ground, and he knew it was going to be a bloody sprint to the city.

  Two-Gut Gruce had seen enough combat to know he was cannon fodder. The plan to retrieve the map from Jensen Lee’s nullsuit was a suicidal effort, same as Red Shade’s attack against the station. But he made it out of that blazing wreck alive and left her smoldering in the dust. Long as he didn’t get stupid he’d keep on breathing that sweet scrubbed nullsuit air.

  “Whistler, tighten up your formation,” Gruce snapped. Whistler’s squad had itself spread thin on his left flank.

  The map on his lens display tracked the other two squads of four left in his command. Those eight plus his remaining two men and himself were all that survived the drop and the blitz to the top of the forested hills. Eleven battle-scarred brutes against the civilized world.

  Chapter 17: Maintenance

  Bill Silver awoke in weightless suffocating darkness. His brain made the terrifying assumption that he was in vacuum, but a sharp intake of breath relieved his fear. Was he sleepwalking again? He groped blindly and felt bedsheets.

  “Myra,” he said. “Where are the lights?”

  No response. Eyes wide and straining, Bill realized he was floating face down above his bed. Why weren’t the backups on? Just as his eyes adjusted to the darkness the lights snapped back to life. Silver squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden brightness as the artificial gravity pulled him to his bed.

  “Lights off,” Bill hissed.

  Immediately the searing white lights on the ceiling were replaced with a soft amber glow from smaller bulbs recessed along the base of the walls. It was just enough to see in the darkness without forcing his eyes to adjust. He rolled out of bed and stood.

  “Myra,” he repeated, this time thick with irritation.

  Still nothing.

  “This better not be your idea of a joke,” he growled.

  After dressing and reattaching his prosthetic Silver headed to the bridge. Everything seemed operational except Myra. He’d always thought it was sloppy to have the AI in control of so many of the ship’s systems, but she insisted she could optimize things better than the stock computer. So far she was never wrong—an infuriating quality which had Silver itching to tell the Captain “I told you so.”

  He went up the ramp to the bridge, through the door, and Ferro whirled on him wide-eyed from the pilot’s chair.

  “What just happened?” she demanded.

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” Silver said.

  “Just cruising like normal, middle of talking to Myra and everything goes dark,” she said. “No warning, no nothing. For a good twenty seconds we were dead in the void there, just drifting. Then everything came right back.”

  “Where’s the Captain?”

  “Left me on watch about three hours ago, haven’t seen him since.”

  “I’ll find him—”

  Silver turned to leave as the bridge door opened.

  “Sorry about that,” the Captain said as he entered. “Couldn’t risk telling anyone or Myra would have found out.”

  “Found out what?” Silver asked.

  “That I was shutting her down.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  The Captain shook his head. “She sabotaged the damn ship.”

  ***

  Bee slept through the blackout, but she woke when Captain Anson’s voice came in over the speakers with a curt command.

  “Crew meeting on the bridge, now.”

  Half-asleep still, she dressed without even thinking about it, but it occurred to her before she walked out the door that as a passenger she might not be included.

  “Myra?” she asked. “Does that mean me too, or…? Myra?”

  Bee frowned and headed to the bridge. She heard footsteps around the corner and out of habit slowed to what could only be described as a creep, padding forward to the wall’s edge. The door to the bridge opened and she heard a snatch of Silver’s voice before it shut.

  “—was only half our power cells, but imagine what she could have done. Autonomous AIs are illegal for a reason, Captain—”

  After waiting at the corner for a few more seconds Bee moved to the bridge. The bulkhead door was shut. She could almost make out the muffled voices, but she couldn’t understand anything. As she went to put her ear up to the door it started to open. She backed down the ramp in retreat but made no effort to hide herself.

  “Hang on,” Willis said to her as he poked his head out, then turned to yell over his shoulder, “Is this a passenger-friendly meeting?”

  “Yeah, why not,” the Captain called.

  “Come on in,” Willis said as he waved her inside.

  With a sheepish smile Bee joined the rest of the crew on the bridge. Willis shut the door behind her. Captain Anson leaned against the back of the command chair, Ferro piloted from her own chair, and the rest of the crew gathered in a semicircle around him. Behind them Bee could see the shuttered windows on the front of the ship.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Willis said.

  He nudged Silver and Truly from behind and they parted to let him and Bee in. Everyone but Spud, the Governor, and Gim was present.

  “Oh, she’s part of the crew now?” Silver said when he saw Bee.

  “She might as well know,” the Captain said. “There’s been some trouble with our power supply. I gave Myra permission to tweak the power systems for efficiency. I was double checking her work when I found out instead of optimizing everything she’d vented half of our power cells. We’ll be fine, it’s just an annoyance.”

  “How do you know it was her?” Bee asked.

  “She covered her tracks with the new permissions I gave her and prevented me from finding out immediately by displaying false information on the bridge.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Well it’s, uh—complicated. I need to do a lot more digging before I can say for sure, but I think she was trying to stop us from going out into the belt.”

  “Wait, it wasn’t just a mistake? She did it on purpose?”

  The Captain looked away and ran a hand through his hair. “Myra’s not like most AIs. She makes her own choices, just like you or me. She’s… based on a person.”

  Silver, Truly, and Willis exchanged some uncomfortable glances and Bee got the impression this was a subject to be avoided. She stopped asking questions even though she wanted to know more.

  “Anyway,” the Captain resumed, “It means we’ll have to swap out our power cells when we get to Optima. We shouldn’t be there more than half a day, but it’s one more thing on the list now. The real problem is Myra. She pulled a lot of weight around here—more t
han I should have given her. She was managing too much without enough oversight.”

  Silver nodded his agreement.

  “I’ve got no problem just using the stock nav,” Ferro said. “The day I need a fancy AI to help me fly is the day I turn in my wings.”

  “Yeah, well just don’t let Myra hear you talk like that,” Captain Anson said. “I’m not leaving her offline for good, just until I correct the problem. Everyone’s going to have to do more work for now, but we’ll still need her after Optima. Any questions?”

  Silver looked like he wanted to object, but he crossed his arms and kept quiet.

  At their silence he said, “Good. Ferro, Silver, I need you two here. Everyone else is taking up space. Go on, beat it.”

  Bee shuffled off the bridge with Willis and Truly. She had a thousand questions but wasn’t sure who to ask. She didn’t really know either of them. Willis left like he had somewhere to be, but Truly was headed to the kitchen.

  “Hey Truly,” she said, waving him down. “The Captain offered to teach me some more in the nullroom, but I’m guessing he’s busy now. I was wondering if you could?”

  Truly turned and considered it, bobbing his head with a frown. “Alright. Yeah, alright. Let me eat first.”

  “Can you come get me when you’re done? I’ll be in my room.”

  Truly gave her a thumbs-up as he continued to the kitchen and Bee headed to her room. She figured she could ask him about things casually, ease into the conversation over the course of their training session. They all seemed friendly, but she didn’t want to overstep her bounds and create friction with anyone she didn’t have to—especially the first officer.

  Bee needed every ally she could get. Silver already hated her and unfortunately he seemed to have a lot of pull on the ship. The Captain was nice, but she didn’t expect to see much more of him. Same with the pilot Ferro. She wished she could get back on the bridge and just watch.

  She wanted to know how everything on the ship worked—and plus then she’d be able to find out more about Myra. The Captain said he was going to fix her or something, what did that mean? Would she be the same when she came back on? Bee hoped so. She opened the door to her room and smiled at what she saw inside.

  The white loaner nullsuit was spread out on the floor. She’d forgotten the Captain let her bring it up to her room. She wanted to clean it up like he suggested, but she wasn’t allowed in the nullroom with just Spud so she stayed up a few hours with Myra figuring out how to disassemble and clean it. It unsettled her a bit how they talked about Spud—like he was an animal, something not quite tame.

  Before she went to sleep she’d put the suit all back together and laid it out. It was a grungy off-white when she first got it, but after scrubbing off the layers of dust and grime it was almost radiant. The color reminded her of the buffet dishes back at the hotel and she became homesick for her cozy little room.

  She hoped Hargrove was okay.

  ***

  “Uh, Truly? Is this on right?” Bee asked, gesturing at herself in the suit. The helmet was still off—she didn’t want to put that on until she was sure about the rest of the suit.

  But also she wasn’t sure if she would puke or not, and she didn’t want to do it in the helmet. Being inside the suit gave her this strange feeling like falling, and she kept wanting to reach her arms out to catch herself even though she was standing still.

  “Yeah, looks fine,” Truly said after a brief inspection. He wore a black undersuit, the only thing she’d seen him in yet besides armor. “Someone teach you how?”

  “Myra,” Bee said. “She helped me last night.”

  “She must like you,” he said as he dressed himself in his gray armor. There was a mechanical whir and locking noise as each piece of armor attached at the orange striped joints.

  “I guess so,” she said as she took a couple of wobbling steps. “What… is she?”

  She was having trouble keeping her balance since the boots kept her anchored to the ground, but the rest of her felt light and floaty. She weighed nothing, which made her movements quick, but she was used to compensating for the pull of gravity still. Nothing felt right.

  “She’s an AI,” was all Truly said as he slipped his gauntlets on.

  “No, I know that, but—never mind,” she said, struggling to stay upright.

  The weirdest part about the nullsuit was that without the helmet on she could feel how heavy her head was compared to the rest of her. The thought gave her stomach a threatening lurch and she had to crouch to steady herself, dropping her helmet in the process.

  “It’s okay.” Fully armored now, Truly’s voice projected from his suit’s speakers. He picked up her helmet for her. “Takes some getting used to. Since we’re indoors you can take your helmet off if you think you’re gonna spew—long as you clean it up.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Bee said, grabbing her helmet.

  “But if you ever end up in zee you’re better off just swimming in it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said with a laugh.

  Bee slid the helmet on and secured it. Truly gave a thumbs-up after checking her and beckoned her to follow. He took a few long steps before making a swan dive up into the center of the nullroom, using just enough force to drift along slowly toward the ceiling while doing neat somersaults.

  “Showoff,” Bee muttered as she focused on walking without falling over.

  Chapter 18: Volunteer

  “Whistler, you got any more drones?”

  Sweat-soaked inside his nullsuit, Two-Gut Gruce couldn’t keep the desperation from his voice. He’d split up his squads along the hilltop, scattered them to avoid losing too many in a concentrated attack but stayed close enough to keep formation. The muscles in his legs tremored from exertion—without the suit’s assistance he would have collapsed already.

  “Down to three,” Whistler said.

  “We’ll need some cover,” Gruce said. “Or more targets at least. Keep moving, you grubs know the drill.”

  A chorus of “yups” from the other men. Gruce opened the private channel to Starhawk.

  “Ready, boss,” he said.

  “Got ten of my birds headed your way, Two-Gut,” Starhawk said over the common channel. “Give ‘em thirty seconds. They’ll be more use than Red Shade was, I’m sure. I’ve seen kittens put up a better fight.”

  Gruce’s eye twitched at the insult. He couldn’t hear his men’s laughter, but he could feel it in the silence that followed. All he could muster was, “Sorry, boss.”

  “If you don’t think you can do this, don’t waste my time. Their guns are forming up again and I’m an easy target up here. Die quickly or get the job done so we can leave.”

  Furious, Gruce shouted orders to his men. “Alright you mangy apes, snap to and keep steady! I’ve got center, Whistler’s left flank, Pluck you’ve got the right! Ten seconds and we charge!”

  ***

  “What do you mean he said no?” demanded Hargrove.

  Sergeant Mallory glared. “What do you think ‘no’ means?”

  “I’ve been held here for hours! You can’t just—”

  “We are trying to protect you,” the Sergeant said. “Along with the rest of the entire population of this city. You’re not nearly as important as you think you are. There are hundreds of others missing and we don’t have the resources to put your needs above everyone else’s.”

  “I’m not asking you to do anything but let me go.”

  Mallory shook his head. “Everyone else in the city is trying to get down here and you’re trying to get back up. You understand it’s about to be a war zone out there?”

  “Yes, and I won’t leave someone I’m responsible for to fend for herself in the middle of it!”

  “You got on that bus, Mr. Levene. You chose to put yourself in our protection.”

  “I made a mistake.”

  “The decision’s been made,” Sergeant Mallory said as he turned to leave. “There’s nothing I can do.�
��

  “Then you’re useless!” Hargrove shouted.

  His shoulders dropped when the door slid shut. He didn’t know what else to do. If they wouldn’t let him out, he couldn’t help Bee. There had to be some way for him to do something—anything. He was trapped with no obvious means of escape.

  When his datapad rang, Hargrove knew it had to be another solicitation. He checked the display and almost threw it against the wall when he saw the same number that had just called him minutes before. Well, he’d give them a piece of his mind—at least yelling at someone would give him something to do.

  “Why are you calling again?” he demanded.

  “Oh, I’m so thrilled to speak with you again, sir. I have an incredible opportunity for you today.” The man’s voice gushed excitement.

  Hargrove cut him off as he was about to launch into what sounded like a well-rehearsed pitch. “Your name.”

  “Of course, sir. My name’s Robert626 and I’m a recruiter for the Volunteer Core Militia.”

  “Privateers,” Hargrove said with disgust. “Dress it up however you like, I know what you are. And you don’t recruit volunteers. That’s idiotic.”

  “Well, we’re an all-volunteer outfit, but no one can sign up if they don’t know about us! We have to get our name out there somehow.”

  “Do you have no shame, calling a man to profit from his misfortune?”

  Robert626 hesitated. “Misfortune? Sir, you just collected on the most lucrative bounty inside the Core for years. And considering the man you killed I’d say you did a good deed today. VCM is always on the lookout for new talent, and we think you’ve got what it takes.”

  Hargrove cringed at the man’s can-do attitude, and was about to tell Robert how ridiculous the whole proposition was when a thought struck him.

  “What can you do for me?” Hargrove asked.

  “Well, let me just start off with what we call our ‘Core Values.’ The Volunteers are a network of reserve privateers that extend from Surface all the way out—”

  “No, no. What can you offer me? Not money—I have specific needs, and you might be able to help me.”