Pixie Hazard

by Archibald Bradford

He was less than articulate in his response.

  “-Kill you bitch!”

  He dove at her wildly, but she stepped into his lunge and tangled her arm around his, twisting until she felt a pop and heard a squeal.

  She pulled him into an improvised shoulder throw that had him hitting the wall with his back on his way down to the floor. Before he could get his bearings she introduced him to her boot as she brutally stomped his head against the neocrete of the station’s deck, rendering him a fair bit beyond unconscious.

  The fight over in seconds, she looked up to see a couple had spotted her efforts from just outside the corridor, both watching with shocked expressions.

  With a sniff and a shrug she brushed the whole thing off like it was no big deal.

  “Ex-boyfriends. Wanted to DP me, I wasn’t into it.”

  It was a rough station so the pair left it alone, hurrying away from the hazardous woman.

  A few minutes later Billy met her in the Pixie’s airlock with a concerned look on her face and Donnie’s shotgun in her hands.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “Not mine. Give me good news.”

  “Eniella’s with our civvies, on their way back. They had found some rando interested in the transport but he backed out all of a sudden, Demarco got to him most likely. Maria took Bryan somewhere out on the promenade. She’s... not on coms.”

  Donnie’s eyes widened as the medic tossed her weapon over.

  “Fuck. I said good news. Anything else?”

  “Davie says a ship just pulled into the station. Thing looks like a red dildo covered in Iowa markings, they just finished docking.”

  “Great. Tell Eniella to haul ass, you and the gingers hold the ship while I find the happy couple. If we make it off this station alive, Bryan and I are going to have a long talk.”

  Billy frowned, but didn’t disagree.

  They had all thought they were safe.

  Donnie tucked her shotgun against her side under her jacket, not that it did much to hide the weapon, and darted out the airlock in search of Maria and her little boy-beau.

  Chapter 26:

  Uncomfortable

  Illicit Inc. was the corporation when it came to all things sexual in the universe, and as such they were right up there with the likes of the Dungeness Corporation in terms of profit margins.

  A few decades prior they made the very savvy business decision to move their headquarters in orbit of the planet Macka in order to establish a partnership with the locals.

  This allowed them to make their high-end products by taking advantage of the unique silk-worms that the cat-people had cultivated over the last several millennia.

  Fully one third of the Macka trade fleet worked in partnership with Illicit Inc. And as such they were the only corporation that had K’or-Macka matriarchs sitting on their board of directors.

  Their annual board meetings were extremely popular events, though not a lot of work got done.

  But Bryan was unaware of most of those facts, his mind occupied with other things.

  When Maria had told him the previous day that she would be picking up some lingerie for his viewing pleasure, she had neglected to mention that he would be intimately involved in the purchasing process.

  So it was unsurprising that a short while after they left the ship he thought he was going to die of shame.

  “Which one do you want baby?” She asked as she held up two lacy bra and panty combos: one set a soft shade of pink, the other rich crimson.

  He couldn’t answer her, they weren’t alone in the store and she wasn’t exactly keeping her voice down.

  She bit her lip and her eyes hooded.

  “Yeah, I guess I should try them both.”

  She pulled him to the back of the shop where a changing booth waited.

  “One person per stall.” A matronly woman said without lifting her face from the datapad in front of her.

  “Sure, sure.” Maria replied breezily only to promptly ignore the restriction by dragging Bryan into the enclosed space.

  “Make a mess and I’ll taz you.” The clerk’s voice sounded from outside, still largely indifferent.

  Again the blonde ignored the warning, pulling the curtain closed to give them some modicum of privacy.

  It was fair to say that she was trying to overcome the wet blanket that had fallen over them since Donnie told him he would be leaving.

  She succeeded magnificently, not only making him forget his troubles, but also that they were well within earshot of every other shopper in the store.

  And once the two of them finished horsing around in the buff, thankfully without getting zapped, she kicked him out to give her room to try on her outfits.

  Bryan had thought that they would make a hasty getaway to avoid the clerk’s wrath, not to mention her taser.

  Not so.

  Maria sent him back into the main part of the shop to fetch more lingerie for her to try on while he swore that the clerk was staring a hold in the back of his head.

  His embarrassment at being in the store in the first place was nothing compared to this.

  Even when he had first found himself alone with Maria in her quarters he was at least alone.

  The store had several other people in it beyond the irate clerk, mostly women, and every time Bryan heard someone privately giggling it felt like it was about him and his most recent dalliance.

  Him standing outside the changing room with three different bras in his hands certainly didn’t help.

  His discomfort was forgotten in an instant though when someone grabbed him from behind and pressed the muzzle of a pistol into the small of his back.

  “Don’t make a scene kid, or I’ll plug ya.”

  “Wha-”

  The gun pressed harder.

  “What did I just say?” The man hissed; “Not a word, we’re leaving.”

  The privacy curtain was abruptly ripped aside and a moment later the pressure from the gun was gone.

  Bryan whirled to see Maria, clad in nothing but skimpy panties, wrestling with his assailant.

  Within a few seconds her powerful arms had turned his head to an uncomfortable angle and left him dead on the floor.

  The young botanist never even had a chance to be afraid before the immediate danger was past.

  “Let’s move.” Maria said tensely, tugging her pants on and throwing her jacket around her shoulders, foregoing her shirt entirely.

  “Wh-what is happening?”

  “Don’t know, right now don’t care. We get back to the ship. Kicking myself for leaving behind my coms, it’s what I get for wanting some alone time with my new toy.”

  The look of death in her eyes was more than enough to keep him from objecting to her label for him.

  That and the fact that he didn’t really mind.

  They exited the store in a rush, most of the people within had noticed the altercation but it wasn’t until a woman’s shrill scream sounded that they knew someone had discovered the body.

  They did their best to disappear into the crowd on the busy promenade, but Maria’s frame simply stood out too much. She held the stolen pistol low against her thigh to keep people from freaking out about it while her other arm pulled Bryan along by his bicep.

  “Fuck, there are more of them. Stay close.”

  She was gripping his arm so tight he had no choice in the matter, having evidently seen something he hadn’t.

  It was a tense couple of minutes, with Maria shoving her way through the increasingly annoyed crowd while Bryan kept fearfully looking over his shoulder.

  “This way.”

  She dragged him into one of the corridors that led to the hub of the station, trying to lose the pursuit in much the same way her captain had earlier.

  But it was a move the trio of hard faced men saw coming and they were right on their heels.

  Unfortunately for them, Donnie had seen it coming as well and greeted Maria in the corridor with a nod before shrugging by her and lev
elling the barrel of her weapon at her pursuers.

  “That’s far enough shitheads.”

  They stopped so quickly it was as if they were at the edge of a cliff.

  The tattooed man in the lead eyed Donnie’s weapon with cautious respect.

  “That’s a plasma shotgun isn’t it?”

  She nodded tersely, not lowering the weapon.

  “Yup.”

  “Is... is that thing even legal?”

  “Depends on who you ask. Seems pretty legal to me about now.”

  “Right.”

  “We done here?”

  He swallowed as he eyeballed the potentially devastating weapon.

  “I guess we have to be.”

  The bald man looked past her to Bryan huddled behind the towering blonde, his scowling face made all the more sinister by the myriad of ink highlighting it.

  His eyes narrowed as they met the kid’s.

  “It’s only a matter of time before we get what we want, we’ll catch up to you eventually boy.”

  Bryan swallowed in fear as the fearsome looking Junker wagged his index finger at him.

  Donnie let out a sigh of exasperation and gave a helpless shake of her head.

  “Well that was a pretty stupid thing to say.”

  He barely had time to realize how badly he had fucked up before her gun bucked against her shoulder as she fired into his midsection.

  The glowing green plasma particles minced through his internals before blowing out his back and carrying on to take down one of the guys foolishly standing behind him.

  Knowing exactly what her captain was about to do, Maria whipped her pistol up and fired off three quick shots to take down the remaining Junker.

  Even as the bodies hit the floor the blond was turning to Bryan.

  He was unable to speak, his eyes glued on the men they just fragged, his face slightly green.

  “You with me baby?” Despite his fear, Bryan nodded emphatically so Maria turned to the skipper; “Someone definitely heard that.”

  Donnie shook out her arm and rolled her shoulder to recover from her weapon’s impressive recoil as she turned to leave.

  “No shit. We’re launching as soon as we’re back on the ship. I’m on point. You watch our backs. Demarco is involved in whatever the fuck this is.”

  Maria frowned but choked back the sudden rush of questions that flooded her mind, instead falling back into her trained role.

  “Copy Skip.”

  Having managed not to vomit, Bryan was in something of a fog, his delightful afternoon having turned into a nightmare.

  It was all he could do to follow the terse orders of the pair of veterans as they worked their way through the station.

  They arrived at the dock to find Demarco and a half dozen of his goons in a standoff with two redheads holding the airlock. Davie and Eva hadn’t had time to don their combat armour, but their repeaters were held at the ready.

  No one was pointing their weapons at anybody else, but that could change in short order.

  Demarco turned at Donnie’s approach, his expression one of disappointment.

  Bryan tried and failed to hide behind Maria.

  And neither she nor her captain missed it when, for the briefest of moments, Demarco’s eyes fell on the kid and lit up with greed.

  “I thought we had a deal Captain. This isn’t how you do business.”

  After sharing a quick glance with Davie and Eva to ensure they weren’t going to do anything untoward, Donnie shook her head at the tubby criminal.

  “No, it’s not how you do business. I don’t sell kids and I don’t cut deals with pirates.”

  There was a pause as he tilted his head.

  “Wait, if it isn’t how I do business, but you don’t sell kids... is that right?” He looked to one of his men; “You know, grammatically speaking?”

  “Think it’s a double negative Mister Demarco.” The man said flatly without taking his eyes off Eva.

  Donnie huffed impatiently.

  “What the fuck ever dickhead, you know what I meant.”

  Demarco’s eyes narrowed and his lip curled up as he sucked his teeth again.

  “Again with the insults. You should have taken the money Nelson.”

  She very deliberately gestured at his pelvis with the tip of her shotgun, where his hand was gripping a custom pulse-pistol in an equally custom holster.

  “You should walk away while you still can. This shit goes down, you drop first.”

  His lip twitched in annoyance as his eyes flicked to her gun.

  Simply put, against such a weapon the six men he had with him meant little, and that was without even counting her three marines.

  He lifted his hand away from his pistol and wagged it in the air with a bit of unnecessary flair to show he was unarmed.

  “Funny thing, my friends with the Juan Corporation just revoked your docking clearance. You and yours are done on this station. I hope you know that.”

  She felt Maria shift at her side as the blonde voiced her opinion.

  “Shithole anyways.”

  “Doesn’t even have an arcade.” Eva agreed blandly.

  Donnie ignored them, though her reaction was much the same: a nonchalant shrug.

  “Mung isn’t the only place in the galaxy that sells gas Demarco. Now get the fuck away from my ship.”

  The crime-lord smirked at her before gesturing to his goons to take their leave.

  “One of these days Nelson, someone is going to wash your mouth out with something foul, and I’m going to buy them the most expensive bottle I can when they do.”

  All venom, no velvet.

  A tense couple of minutes later and he and his men were gone from the docking bay, Donnie and her crew’s guns held tight the whole time.

  Right as the airlock closed behind them, Billy came over the coms.

  “Skipper, I just got off the horn with Mung Central, we’ve been rather pointedly asked to leave.”

  “Right, tell them we’ll be disembarking shortly. Then leave the cockpit to Eniella and meet us in the airlock. There is something we need to take care of before we leave.”

  She turned to face Bryan, who suddenly looked a mite nervous.

  Chapter 27:

  Spill yer Guts

  They’d barely gotten inside when, at Donnie’s unspoken direction, two redheads tackled Maria, allowing the captain to grip Bryan by his shirt collar and slam him into the bulkhead.

  “Alright kid, no more bullshit, no more games, and no more hiding behind Maria. What have you gotten us mixed up in?”

  “Captain!” Maria protested as Eva deftly put her into an armlock with her sister’s help.

  “Let’s you and me stay out of it Sledge so the skipper can do her thing.”

  It was a rare thing indeed for the volatile redhead to be the voice of calm.

  Bryan’s hands were gripping Donnie’s instinctively, ineffectually trying to free himself from her grip.

  “I-I swear, Captain, I don’t know!”

  “Bullshit!” She slammed him into the bulkhead again; “Every shitbird on that station wants your ass in a sling, and you are going to tell me why, or I swear I will hand you over myself!”

  Maria struggled mightily against Eva and Davie, but was ultimately unable to free herself from the seamless twins.

  “God-dammit you leave him alone Donnie!” She roared.

  “Enough! Settle down Maria! And let her up you two!” Billy barked before turning to the captain; “You give him up it’ll be over my dead body.”

  “It’ll be over all of our bodies if those Junkers catch us!” Donnie snarled back; “Now everyone whose name doesn’t start with ‘Captain’ shut the fuck up!”

  Bryan had tears of fright streaming down his face, his head turned away from her severe glare.

  “Kid, look at me.” Donnie said between grit teeth as she sued for patience; “Bryan, look at me.”

  It took a minute but he finally did, he opened his mout
h to say something but she shook her head before he could.

  “You’re about to lie to me again and you are way too young to try. Tell me everything, or I put you back through that airlock and let the chips fall for you.”

  Billy crossed her arms over her breasts and narrowed her eyes.

  “Donnie I told you-”

  This time it was Kyle that interrupted her, placing his hand on her shoulder to still her complaints.

  He and Bunny had come from the common room at all the commotion, now they watched the drama unfold, the K’or-Macka’s ears flat to her head and her tail puffed up in the face of the tense confrontation.

  “Let it play out Billy.” Kyle murmured; “I’m not getting my Bunny killed for some kid who’s been lying to us.”

  Donnie ignored the exchange, once again prompting Bryan to talk.

  “Never mind Maria, or Billy, or any of the others. What is it the Junkers want?”

  Bryan finally turned to face her, a look of fearful resignation on his face.

  “I don’t know.” She opened her mouth to argue but he rushed on; “I don’t! The whole project was classified, so there is that, but I don’t know why. I’m just a botany tech student, whatever it is they’re after, I don’t know.”

  Silence reigned on the ship at that point.

  “Classified?” Maria asked.

  Not a one of them missed the note of hurt in her voice.

  Eva and Davie had let her up, though they were ready to subdue her again if necessary.

  Bryan’s expression of remorse would have been funny if it hadn’t been so tragic.

  “I swear Mary, I don’t know what this is about.” He begged.

  “What corp?” The bruiser asked simply.

  Her tone was cold now: she’d shut down her emotions as only a soldier could.

  He flinched as if she had struck him, then hung his head and told them.

  “O-Outerlight Union.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Donnie finally backed off of him and his hands clasped together as he hunched up shamefully.

  “I signed a lot of papers when I got the internship. I-I didn’t know what to do.”

  It was a long time before anyone said anything; eventually though, Eniella’s voice crackled over the coms unit on the wall and in the ears of those wearing them.