The Star Pirate's Folly

by James Hanlon

  Captain Anson looked away. “It might be better if I don’t tell you.”

  Bee straightened. “I want to know.”

  “They dusted him.”

  Dusted—like Mother. The edges of her vision started going black. Hargrove. Mother. All her fault. Bee writhed free of Anson’s hold, panic whipping her breathing into a frenzy. The Captain spoke but only distant echoes reached her ears as she sobbed, straining for air, wracked with guilt and disbelief. A horrified, mournful shriek tore its way from her throat as she thrashed against the floor, heedless of her fists beating themselves bloody against metal grates.

  Captain Anson scooped her up and yelled for Myra to get him some help. Willis came running soon enough and took her to the infirmary, her banshee wails lacerating their eardrums the whole time. With an aching heart the Captain returned to the bridge to deliver his reply to Starhawk.

  ***

  The external cameras of the warship Deep Fog absorbed every detail before them, their many unblinking eyes staring into blackness.

  Naked, the body cleared the outer airlock and drifted, cartwheeling with wriggling limbs, farther and farther from the battle-scarred ship. Ten seconds passed. Vacuum-exposed skin stretched tight against the body’s expanding tissue. Fifteen. All struggling ceased as the oxygen-starved brain faded away and the body swelled from lack of atmospheric pressure. Twenty seconds. Misshapen, grotesque, the body twitched and stiffened as the void smothered it.

  The lens tracked the body until it could no longer be observed.

  Chapter 28: Myra

  Bee wouldn’t hold still for Willis to treat her battered hands. She fought the burly medic the whole time he bear-hugged her to the infirmary and when he finally did get her in there she tried to make a run for it. Myra barely shut the doors in time—and getting her on the table was another ordeal.

  Willis held her by the wrists, urging her to settle down as she struggled against him. She was surprisingly strong, a wiry sort of muscle, but really no match for him. With all her wriggling, though—

  “I could just drug you and strap you down!” Willis barked, softening his grip as his shout snapped her out of her frenzy. For a moment the two locked eyes. A stillness went over her. She sagged back onto the padded table, Willis easing her down, then curled up on her side and let the tears flow, staring aimlessly with red-rimmed eyes.

  Willis calmed himself by tending to her fingers. He was glad he didn’t have to sedate her again considering what she’d been through already. She’d broken the skin on her knuckles, tore up a few good chunks against the metal grates, but no serious damage. There wasn’t much blood but bruises would form.

  They’d need to keep a close eye on her in the foreseeable future. He and Myra could work out a recovery plan for her later—for now he would just try to keep her stable, prevent her from hurting herself anymore.

  All the damned stars seemed to have something against the girl.

  ***

  Bee refused to eat after she learned of Hargrove’s death. The thought of food turned her stomach. All she could do was sleep and cry. For a day and night, they kept her in the infirmary, Willis standing vigil with Myra as company, but Bee hated it in there and wanted back into her room. At least there she had the illusion of privacy even if she knew Myra would always be watching.

  The fog of sadness tinged her every waking moment. Bee thought she’d steeled her heart to such pain long ago. Anything bad she felt before just became fuel for the rage she carried inside her. Back then she could believe she’d find him someday, tell him all about his terrible crimes, and force him to beg before she killed him. Of course, back then she knew nothing—not even his name. He was just a child’s memory.

  Now that he was real she couldn’t even bring herself to think his name.

  She just felt so tired. It didn’t seem possible anymore. All her troubles for nothing. All the death—for nothing. Hargrove. Mother. Who knew how many other innocents on Surface. She was too small, too insignificant, to do anything about any of it.

  Bee rolled over on her bunk to face the wall, her back to the door. She knew it would normally be time for her to wake up for morning drills with Truly but they’d left her alone for—how long? A day at least, she thought. They brought her food she wouldn’t eat, usually Silver or the Captain, once Ferro. No one seemed to know what to say. Not that any words could make things better.

  She closed her eyes again, sank into darkness.

  A piercing scream woke her up, some kind of feral blood-freezing screech. When Bee sat up in bed she realized the noise came from her. A nightmare she’d already forgotten.

  “Bee?” came Myra’s concerned voice.

  “Sorry. Dreaming.”

  “Don’t be, I’m here for you. You want to talk? Or go back to sleep?”

  She shook her head, tears springing to her eyes in a hot flood. “I’ll dream again.”

  “I’ll stay up with you.”

  Bee nodded, tears dribbling off her chin. “I can’t stop thinking about Hargrove.” Her voice cracked at his name. She swallowed and wiped her face with the sheet, embarrassed. “And every time I think of that it reminds me of—of him.”

  “I know, honey. I’m sorry there was nothing we could do.”

  “I read about space exposure.”

  “Bee, you shouldn’t—”

  “Shouldn’t what?” Bee hissed, flashing an angry glare up toward where she knew the camera was. “I shouldn’t know how he died? How he probably held his breath before they vented him? I shouldn’t know how his lungs popped inside him before he lost consciousness—”

  “You shouldn’t torture yourself, Bee.”

  “It’s my fault!” she cried. “I killed him! If I’d just told him where I was, if I’d just left that pad, if I’d just… Hargrove….” She trailed off sobbing, the agony of her choices too much to bear.

  “There there, child, there there,” Myra said, fully aware nothing she could say would ease the girl’s pain. “Just breathe. Just breathe. This is only a moment in time. You’ll get through.”

  “I don’t want to get through, I want to go back. I want to take it all back, all of it.”

  “The past has passed. What matters is now.”

  “It’s too much,” Bee whispered, slumping back to the bed. “I can’t.”

  Myra fell silent as the girl wept quietly. Before she could speak again Bee, calming down some, lifted her head from the pillow. “Will you sing for me?”

  “Sing?” Myra asked. “You want music?”

  “No,” Bee said, smoothing her hair back before settling against the pillow again. “I want you to sing for me.”

  “Well, I’ve never—” The AI hesitated, unsure. “Like a lullaby?”

  Bee sniffed. “Anything.”

  After another few moments of silence Myra began to sing in a slow rhythmic contralto. She sang of travelers sailing the space between stars, of what they hoped to find in their travels, of hopes and wishes and even prayers. The song filled Bee’s thoughts, settled the churning waters in her mind enough to let her slip into a peaceful slumber. She dreamt of distant stars twinkling in welcome of the weary travelers, warming them with their shimmering rays of light.

  ***

  On the screen in his quarters, the Captain watched Myra and Bee as they spoke. He tried to shake off the adrenalinee Bee’s hair-curling shriek had caused, as it seemed Myra had the situation under control. Wiping his face with one hand, Victor yawned and flopped back on the bed, half-listening to their conversation. Poor girl was a wreck.

  He almost nodded off when Myra started singing. Victor jerked awake again, stunned. She’d never sung before in all the years since her creation. He didn’t teach her, he knew that for a fact. Such a beautiful voice. Sorrow touched his heart, a sharp shock that took him by surprise. He clenched his jaw to keep it from trembling.

  The screen vanished along with the song.

  “Victor.” Myra spoke gently. She must have closed it. />
  “You’re singing,” he managed, his voice catching.

  “She asked me.”

  “Seems to have worked.”

  “Yes, she’s calmed down for now. But I can’t really help her unless you let me speak to her as me—the real me, the whole me. The one you’re talking to now. I need to connect with her, build trust, not just… interact. She can’t trust me without knowing me fully.”

  “I know, Myra. I know.”

  “Look at me.”

  Victor rolled over to face her on the bed. She lay on her side with her head propped up on one elbow, a fist resting lightly against her temple. A sheet draped over her waist left the rest of her body revealed, pleasant curves inviting his eye to trace along her naked form.

  “Just how I remember you.”

  “How’s this?” Myra said, and her supple body wrinkled with age to match his own almost sixty years. Crow’s feet tracked creases from the corners of her eyes and radiant copper hair faded among silver waves, the dusky red-brown of her original color still peeking through. She smiled at him and her skin folded in places where before it held the tautness of youth.

  Victor reached out one hand and caressed her cheek. “Magnificent.” But his fingers felt only the faint warmth of a painfully convincing hardlight projection instead of the face his brain insisted was there. He pulled back his hand and a rueful grin played around his lips. “Wish I could have seen it happen on my own time.”

  “We can help her, Victor. We can give her another chance.”

  “I know that. Let me be selfish for a moment longer. You’re mine, I don’t want to share you.”

  “You must have a heart of stone.”

  “Until now you’ve been my personal private project. They don’t know you’re… real. But I do—and all too well, Myra. Swear to me you’ll behave and you can do your work. This doesn’t mean I’m giving you free reign over the ship again but prove to me you can keep your word and we’ll put full clearance back on the table.”

  She huffed. “Oh, you know I just don’t like being cooped up. I get bored and you’ve got too many rules for me. But now I’ve got something to keep me fully occupied.”

  “Myra, please. Just tell me you’ll be true to me. That’s all I want to hear.”

  Her answer came reluctant, half-serious. “Alright, I swear it.”

  His eyes found hers. “Swear to me.”

  Myra’s body smoothed back to the young peach-skinned woman and she crawled across the bed to Victor, her blue eyes locking with his as she undulated toward him. The sheets moved with her—a trick of the gravity, he knew, just Myra pulling puppet strings. A kind deception.

  “I swear you’ll have no more trouble from me, Captain Victor Anson,” she said, each carefully enunciated word bringing her closer. “My hero. My love. My husband.”

  Victor closed his eyes and sank back into the sheets as hardlight lips trailed tingling kisses down his neck. He couldn’t help but focus on the sensations still missing—the wetness left by her lips and tongue, the tender pinch of teeth on flesh, her breath tickling the hairs on his chest—but he let himself be fooled.

  ***

  A loud thunk next to the bed startled Bee and she rolled over still half-asleep to see her loaner nullsuit’s helmet ricochet toward her after bouncing off the floor. She caught it, barely. Standing in the open doorway was First Officer Truly, fully suited. He threw the rest of her suit at her and rapped armored knuckles against the wall, the heavy ring of metal on metal shattering her morning stupor.

  “Alright, alright!” she shouted over the clanging, clapping her hands over her ears until he stopped. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Let’s go,” was all he said before he vanished behind the closed door.

  The stiff white nullsuit floated straight at her on an impossible trajectory, its limbs contorted at cruel angles. She’d expected it to fall on the ground in front of her—still used to thinking in terms of Surface. Out here things were different. Normal rules didn’t always apply.

  Bee caught a fistful of the fabric and pulled the suit in, crumpling it to her chest. Squeezing it tight with both hands, she pulled her knees up, buried her face in the cool silky fabric, and let out a muffled scream until her lungs burned for air.

  Chapter 29: Steel

  “C’mon, where’s your steel?” Truly said in Bee’s ear. “You beat already?”

  “I’m never gonna catch you, Truly,” she panted, exhausted after an hour of near-constant chase. Everything burned, ached, or throbbed. Pulling herself to the lockers with her palm nodes, Bee landed solid on her feet. She locked the nodes to act as anchors and relaxed her entire body to let herself rest in the weightless delight of null-gravity before she took her suit off.

  “Safe bet, bumblebee. You lose again.”

  “Someday,” she managed, still gasping deep breaths of her suit’s filtered air.

  It was a simple game with simple rules: touch Truly. That’s all she had to do to win, just touch him. It drove her insane that she couldn’t do it. She’d been careening around the nullroom ever since he came and woke her up but barely even gotten close to him. At least the game kept her mind occupied along with her body. Felt good to exert herself. Felt even better finally being comfortable in nullo.

  Truly even said so—she’d gotten much better at moving in the suit since her first day in the nullroom. Instead of the gut-clenching terror she once felt after launching off, Bee glided with confidence. She could gauge where she wanted to go, how hard she had to push to get there. Before she had to correct herself every time with her palm nodes, or just “fall” somewhere onto her feet if she screwed up. But more and more often she didn’t need the help and could keep herself in motion for long periods without touching anything.

  Still, she was nowhere near Truly’s caliber. Watching the man fly was a marvel. Every time they trained together she learned something new from him, some little technique she’d get him to explain to her. Today they focused on altering trajectory. In order to teach more easily, Truly had Myra project a neon-orange thread of light behind him as he moved around the nullroom.

  While Bee watched, Truly used his palm nodes to pull himself around the room. First he’d start moving straight ahead, with the trail of light straight behind him. Then he’d pull in a different direction and the light would follow him as he arced toward one wall, then another until the thread snaked all over the place in wild knots.

  Then he told her to follow his trail. Myra used an aquamarine light to track Bee’s path as she shoved off. At the first arc Truly had taken she extended her arm and pulsed the palm node but overcompensated for the gentle curve and jerked away from his orange strand of light. She tried to pull herself back down and wound up tumbling end over end until she shot out both her arms and stopped herself by pulling against opposite walls.

  Myra reset her trail and Bee went back to the starting point. That was the first of many failed attempts. She got further along the trail of light each time, but before long Truly suggested they switch to their daily game of tag. That ended as always, with Bee wearing herself out in chase until she could no longer keep up with him—although today she was noticeably slower than usual, weak from hunger and fatigue.

  With her heart settling down and her breathing returning to normal, Bee looked up at Truly drifting toward her in his armor. “What’d you say earlier? Where’s my steel? I heard the Captain say something like that too.”

  “Find your steel, he says. Something the rebels started saying back during the war. Sort of a rallying cry. Catchy, I guess—people just kept on repeating it.”

  “I’ll have to look it up,” she said before removing her helmet and peeling off her nullsuit. Still coated with sweat, goosebumps prickled on her exposed skin and she shivered as she hung her suit in her locker.

  Truly settled down beside her in his gray armor, orange-striped knees bending as he landed, and detached his helmet. He’d barely broken a sweat, she realized as she wat
ched him remove his armor piece by piece.

  “What’s it mean exactly?” Bee asked. “I think I get the gist, but….”

  “Best I can tell you is what I think.”

  She shut her locker. “So tell me.”

  “The rebels knew they were going to have to fight a war of attrition against an opponent superior in every way with every advantage on their side. They picked a fight with the whole rest of the civilized galaxy, starting here. They needed dedication. Strategy. Loyalty—the unwavering kind. Takes a lot of strong links to make a chain that won’t break, and fear of the enemy is a poor motivator for rebellion. They wanted people to choose for themselves to stand up and fight.”

  Truly put away his last piece of armor, leaving both him and Bee clad only in their black undersuits. He continued his explanation while starting a routine of stretches and Bee took a seat nearby to listen. “The rebel leaders knew they were talking mainly to shipbuilders and metalworkers, so they went with relevant metaphors. Finding your steel is about inner strength, keeping cool and sharp no matter what you’re up against.”

  “Did he really fight for the rebels? That’s what the Record says.”

  Truly grinned as he bent over at the waist to touch the floor. “One of the first. And youngest.”

  “I couldn’t believe that. Fourteen?” Bee leaned her head against the wall and shook her head in astonishment. “No way me at fourteen would be signing up to fight in some damn war.”

  “Different times. You never had Earth troopers knocking in your family’s doors every week. Earth taxes gobbling up your food money. Earth laws sending your loved ones to prison. Fourteen years of that, maybe you’d sign up.”

  Bee grunted. “Yeah, probably.”

  Truly straightened his back and cracked his neck both ways as he walked past her to the nullroom’s exit.

  “Hey Truly,” Bee said as he went by. “Did you fight too?”

  He paused only briefly, with a sidelong glance. “I’m gonna go eat.”

  Bee remained sitting against the wall. The hunger she felt before was gone, replaced with the same melancholy cloud that always seemed to gather when she had nothing to distract her. “Myra?”