Salvage Conquest

by Chris Kennedy

  The primary had been kicking out flares and pulses—it would take an exceptional navigator to stay hidden and not fry their own ship, but what information they’d been able to turn up about the Incisor indicated that was more than likely who they had. Some part of Elma’s brain had been convinced of the Incisor’s position for months, but she had other, less dangerous, theories to try first.

  One of the other pirate ships had been a total loss in battle, the second vented to space in a way that happily wiped out all crew but left the well-secured cargo safe and profitable. The Trade Council wouldn’t honor the minimum without the Incisor, though, and after all they’d heard and read about the ship and its reprehensible crew, they had no interest in leaving such beasts behind in any event.

  “Ninety-two is worth risking life and limb for.” Selithra’s words brought an immediate groan from Dekko, but Elma noted he already had the course plotted.

  “And the ship, don’t forget the ship.” The Cyyrid muttered a few more untranslatable phrases—surely he just made them up, at this point—and put a diagram up on the big screen.

  “We come around the long way—it’ll take three extra days, but we can save fuel by hugging tight to the heliosphere where the smaller debris has burned up, we can see the big chunks coming, and interference will keep us from having to run dark. They won’t see us coming.”

  “And if a flare fries us?”

  “They have a good pilot,” Dekko admitted grudgingly. “But I’m better.”

  Elma estimated with more than ninety-two percent assurance that was true.

  “Better, if we time it right, and they end up where we think they will, we can throw a couple of big debris chunks their way, distract them long enough to get close, and knock their systems out.”

  “That’s a lot of ifs,” Selithra warned, but her ears pricked toward Sinan with visible enthusiasm.

  “We do to them what they’ve been doing to ships throughout Githan,” Sithan replied firmly. “We’ll make it work.”

  “You’ve got your orders.”

  Those orders mostly worked out, minus an unexpected flare and the Venatrix’s volley only partially knocking out Incisor’s systems. The pirate ship played dead in the water until they got close, then lit up with defensive artillery.

  “Well, fuck.” Jillian steadied herself as the ship lurched around them, running for their fighter. “Who’s in?”

  “I’m missile-duty, Jillian.” Sinan’s voice, utterly calm over comms, caught ever so slightly at the end. “And Dek’s navigating us through some turds. We’re staying on the bridge. Cap’s on her way.”

  “And me,” Nissi chimed in, breathless as she no doubt ran through the ship to get to the cargo hold.

  “Smilps are already aboard.” Elma swung up into their deceptively clunky old fighter behind the human. The Smilps and the captain had worked on it for years, making it likely the ugliest, deadliest thing on their ship.

  “You’ve got two minutes to load in, then we’re launching.” Jillian pointed Elma away from the cabin as she spoke over comms, making clear she, herself, would pilot. Elma had no inclination to argue—though again, she could react faster to obstacles in their way. Once Jillian locked in, nothing would keep the fighter from making contact with the pirate ship. Besides, with Jillian piloting, Elma could load in for the assault.

  Selithra swung into the pod that secured the passengers, belting in as the hatch shut behind them. Jillian punched in her codes, and the small ship started moving before the cargo hold fully opened.

  “We’re swinging under and launching the Smilp-bots first,” Jillian announced, likely for Nissi’s benefit. “We’ll be keeping close to the debris, and Sinan’ll be launching missiles—stay tied up. I’ll let you know before the launch.”

  “Before the Smilp-bot launch?” Nissi asked, taking in their pod, all eight of her eyes narrowed.

  “Our launch.” Selithra peeled her lips back, battle-grin in full display, then clicked her helmet into place. “Get suited for space. We aren’t sure what kind of air they breathe, and once Jillian throws us, we don’t have a lot of back up.”

  Nissi blinked her eyes out of order, then followed suit with the cool professionalism Elma had appreciated on the Yrba.

  The Pikith wished she had a display to track Jillian’s and Sinan’s moves. The fighter jerked and juked, and they were shaken by close proximity missiles more than once. Neither human nor Caldivar so much as cursed over comms, and no alarms sounded in the fighter.

  “It’s an escape pod,” Nissi murmured, swaying sharply in her seat as Jillian dodged some other invisible danger.

  “Was,” Selithra said, arms neatly folded on her lap. “Breathing systems have been repurposed for compression jets, and the engine…”

  “We use it to superheat a hull and melt our way in,” Nissi finished the captain’s prompt with admirable insight. “And the fighter will just…throw us at the ship?”

  “Pirates are used to ignoring escape pods until the battle is done. We like to…what was it Jillian said?”

  “Hoist them on their own petard,” Elma supplied, twisting her helmet until the latch caught. “It’s good for them.”

  “It’s the last lesson some of them ever need to learn,” Selithra said, setting Elma up perfectly for the reply.

  “It’s the last lesson, period, for most of them.”

  Nissi spread her limbs in a gesture Elma had come to recognize as satisfaction. “I like this crew.”

  “So far, so good with you too, Nis. Smilp-bots away. Carver, take over.” Jillian’s voice remained level, giving no indication of how they fared on the spaceside of things. They weren’t dead, which was a great sign.

  More minutes passed, and, again, Elma wished they’d put a screen in the pod. It wasn’t necessary, but then she could, at least, prepare for the abrupt cuts the fighter took and maybe track what Carver was up to with his bot. She ran a gloved hand over her favorite gun, longer muzzled and easy to handle at her top speed, and counted her blades to soothe nerves.

  Two tucked into each forearm brace, four at her waist. Three under her suit for a worst-case scenario. Selithra had once tried to warn Elma against using blades in potentially depressurizing situations, but then she saw the Pikith in a knock-down fight, and later withdrew her objections. The memory settled her nerves further.

  “Keep those buckles tight, ladies. We’re out in 10…9…”

  Elma bared her teeth and tilted her head back, getting ready for the sudden press of gravities. If she guessed right, which odds were in favor of, Jillian would time the throw around a detonation, using the scatternoise from the missile to hide both the pod’s launch and the fighter’s dodge behind something in the debris field. In the unlikely case the pirates noticed the pod, they’d be more occupied with the Venatrix than such a small, no-threat craft.

  Jillian’s aim wasn’t as perfect as hers, but it took Selithra only a few bursts of the compression jets to tuck them right up under the Incisor.

  “Fire it up, El.”

  Elma knocked her helmet in acknowledgement and unstrapped, crossing over the tight space to pull up the very limited pod sensors. They had enough reach to roughly estimate the thickness of the pitted surface above them. Nissi shifted but kept her seat, and Elma focused on angling the controls and toggling the pressure. Nothing too direct or sustained that might throw up a warning on the ship or backfire and blow their fragile pod shell. Patience, angle, fire, cool, fire…success. She deployed magnets around the small hole, holding the pod in place.

  “We don’t have a tight lock, but the pod shouldn’t spin off if they take evasive maneuvers.”

  At the confirmation, Selithra unbelted, pushing up to release the emergency slide of the pod surface, with direct line of sight into the Incisor.

  Big enough to fit them, small enough not to fully vent the entire ship when they broke through the inner hull. Alarms, auto-patching, and sealing of corridors if they weren’t lucky, but better than
accidently killing any captives the pirates had taken. Sometimes it was the only option, but…

  Elma cleared her thoughts and pushed past Nissi and the captain. Selithra was strong, but Elma was faster, and she wormed through the framing quickly, pulling out the torch to cut a slightly better path. Breaking into the ship took longer than she would have liked, but she’d already rolled in and taken stock of the hall before the breach alarm shrieked.

  “We’re in.” A flicker of movement, and she dodged before realizing it was one of the Smilp-bots.

  “Safe,” it signaled, flashing five for the number of pirates they’d killed. After a pause, it flashed seven more times.

  “We’ve got two each, and a bonus to whoever’s lucky.” They could save Jillian one, but it seemed unlikely she’d make it back in time.

  Selithra emerged into the corridor, took stock, and nodded.

  “Let’s stay together. Carver’s bot says five are on the bridge, one’s in cargo.”

  “They could blow the cargo if they catch us,” Nissi warned, her enormous weapon at the ready.

  “What’s the fun in leaving the bridge til last? Carver will lead the way, Nissi, you next. I saw how those limbs help you propel. Elma, you ready to shoot some kelifish in a kettle?”

  Carver-bot skittered up the wall, opened a hatch, and disappeared inside. The three beings followed, Elma pulling the hatch back into place well before the robot came to fix the breach.

  Lazy, she tsked to herself. The pirates should have sent a crew person to be sure the breach had been caused by debris or a missile hit, and confirmed it hadn’t been a boarding party. Maybe one of the five pirates the bots had taken out had been the smart one. Pirates didn’t tend to double-crew for brilliance.

  The path to the bridge took longer than any of them would have liked, but at Nissi’s three-handed gesture, they stopped, Selithra scooting as far to the side as she could for Elma to pass.

  Carver-bot sketched out a shape, and Nissi lined over it with fast burning det-tape. Not the safest thing to use in such cramped quarters, but they wouldn’t be able to cut into the bridge and maintain the element of surprise.

  With a series of quick gestures, Selithra indicated she and Nissi had covering fire. They all backed up, and Carver-bot reared up to shield them as best he could.

  A fiery hiss filled the duct, the light changing from the dull white of their helmets to a blue-hot brilliance. Elma squeezed her eyes shut a moment too late, and the image of the door they’d created burned into her eyelids. The sizzling hiss took a sharp edge, and exactly the moment the noise climbed high enough to make her wince, it ended, and she threw herself forward, careful not to touch the new, still raw-red, edges.

  She somersaulted down into the bridge, in constant motion as she took in the scene.

  Six now, not five, towering chitinous things. Shiny yellow shells, waving mandibles, nearly as many eyes as Nissi. Would her blade cut them? Tempting to find out.

  Laser and projectile shots came from above, either Nissi or the captain taking down one, while suppressing fire did its job. Pirates dove for cover, but Elma knew where they landed.

  A blur of motion, she dropped two who were too slow to react. Two Smilp-bots, most likely controlled by Carver and Dot, joined the fun, skittering around so low to the ground, one of the pirates screamed in surprise. Or maybe that was from the shot it took to its armored neck.

  “There’s three!” a pirate shouted, and Elma grinned as her translator caught it.

  “Four. Get Grawl up here,” another one, farthest from her, commanded.

  A flurry of orders and shouts sounded from several directions, but Elma tucked it all away for later, and she didn’t stopped moving. She raced up a console, immediately pushing off to change her trajectory before any of the remaining three could get off a shot. She used the momentum to get just enough height to catch the loudest one at the perfect angle behind his console, and the bellowing stopped.

  Nissi shouted a warning, and Elma dropped to the ground in time to miss a flurry of shots. The Smilp-bots disappeared, and a few moments later, all noise and shots ceased.

  “Clear!” Selithra dropped down onto the bridge. She reached to unfasten her helmet then paused, clearly thinking better of it, and went to the control consoles instead.

  “Elma, Nissi, take the cargo hold. I’ll signal Venatrix and get us settled here.”

  Elma’s second favorite part—checking out the goods.

  * * *

  “What do you mean, you don’t know what it is?” Jillian asked the moment she hopped out of the fighter. They wouldn’t send a confirmation to the Trade Council until they’d had a chance to examine what the pirates had hoarded, and neither Sinan nor Jillian wanted to be left out of the spoils-surveying.

  “Why aren’t you sending video?” Dekko complained over comms. “Don’t make me come land the Venatrix on that shitty pirate ship.”

  “It’s getting my video feed all staticky,” Elma explained, again, with great patience. “The captain had to come down and see it too.”

  “Mostly the usual,” Selithra added, pointing at the crates they’d begun carefully scanning and splitting open. “Credit on various portable drives, artifacts both local and out-system, helmets of the beings they killed, some gemstones, fancy foods.”

  “So…oh.” Jillian got through enough of the mess to get a clear line of sight on the incubator they’d unpacked from an oversized crate. “It’s an…egg?”

  “It’s an egg. And behind the egg…” Selithra prompted.

  Sinan’s claws extended as she took in the second apparatus. “Tiny being. Infant? It looks…human-y.”

  “It’s not purple, spotted, furred, or scaled. I think it’s human-y. The egg has bio signs, but nothing I can connect to anything that hatches or doesn’t. We think these are what the Trade Council wants. Everything else is just…” Elma flapped her hands.

  “Normal,” Jillian finished, craning her head slightly to take in the maybe-human behind the egg. “Well. Let’s give them the egg and baby, get our credit and get moving.”

  Nissi shook her head. “They don’t want any babies. Those gemstones are a mix of ancient crown jewels from the four kingdoms that once ruled Hilmers. Having them on hand could help bring some sense back to the Hethans. I don’t think the Trade Council is going to take responsibility for living creatures, and the out-system news specifically said valuable cargo, not beings. I don’t know what they’ll want to do with the infants.”

  “What?” Jillian took three rapid steps backward. “They want the ship, they get the ship. We get thirty million credit plus a bonus for crown jewels.”

  “Don’t you want to find where this egg and this baby came from?”

  “Absolutely not.” Jillian shuddered. “Nope. Nope. Nope. No babies. We do this, in part, for expressly no babies.”

  Sinan chuffed something between a laugh and agreement and managed to back away with slightly more casualness than Jillian.

  “We can just box them back up and give it to the Trade Council. By the time they figure it out, we’re out of the gate.” Jillian smiled with both sides of her mouth, pleased with her idea.

  “We can’t.” Selithra sighed. “The pod the human-ish child is in is almost out of power, and even the Smilps can’t figure out what to tweak to hook it up to something. Anything we do has an equal chance of shutting the device down as recharging it.”

  “And unless they send someone to tow us in, we need time for repairs before we travel all the way through the system,” Dekko pointed out sensibly.

  “Seems doubtful this is a tiny pirate, and we try not to kill innocents.” Sinan allowed.

  “So, here’s the thing,” Elma said, shrugging. “We’re gonna have a baby.”

  * * * * *

  Marisa Wolf Bio

  Marisa Wolf was born in New England, and raised on Boston sports teams, Star Wars, Star Trek, and the longest books in the library (usually fantasy). Over the years she majored in
English in part to get credits for reading (this...only partly worked), taught middle school, was headbutted by an alligator, built a career in education, earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and finally decided to finish all those half-started stories in her head.

  She currently lives in Texas with three absurd rescue dogs, one deeply understanding husband, and more books than seems sensible. Learn more at www.marisawolf.net.

  # # # # #

  Have Spacecat Will Travel by John G. Hartness

  Bek’ah popped open the hatch and flowed out onto the metal grating. The ship’s engines pulsed along contentedly some fifty feet below the maintenance catwalk where she lay stretching and massaging her cramped leg muscles. Just because a being could fit into a space didn’t necessarily mean that she should contort herself into that space. But she was alive.

  Alive, and if the sensations she’d experienced while crammed into the odd storage compartment were any indication, at least one gate jump away from Tideb, her home planet. Away from Tideb, and away from the Gods-forsaken Gritloth Salvage and Trading Company reps. Salvage and Trading Company her fuzzy tail. Those bilge-sucking lizards were nothing more than slavers, pure and simple.

  Whatever, at least she was out of that frying pan. Now to see exactly what kind of fire she’d hopped into on this little beauty.

  She picked the hauler out of the Tideb Prime Spaceport for two reasons: it had the earliest departure berth and no guards. That told Bek’ah that it wasn’t carrying anything worth guarding, or the crew felt like they could take care of themselves. So either they were supremely arrogant, or supremely broke. She could deal with either one, honestly, but she was kinda hoping for arrogant. If they were broke, the chances of them getting out of range of the Gritloth were pretty slim.

  She took a good look around the engine room. One primary pulse engine, with a pair of directional thrusters and a small emergency backup engine with a separate battery power source. Smart setup, kept them from floating dead in space if something went sideways. The engine room looked clean and tight beneath her, and even the maintenance catwalk she was on was spotless.