by James McEwan
“What was that mistress?” The man asked as he started to turn around.
Carrie, always the professional, hit him again, “Did I say you could talk, slave?”
“No mistress, please can I have another?”
Carrie gave Thad a look of confusion. He handed her a few large credit notes and pointed to the door. She understood, took the money, and left the room.
“Please, mistress can I have another?” The man asked.
Thad got right behind the man’s bare ass and said, “Yes you can!” Thad let lose a vicious kick that sent the man sailing off the bed, head first into the wall. Whoops, a little too much force, Thad thought, for the man’s head went through the drywall.
The pirate pulled his head free and tried to shake off the blow, “What in the Hell?” He stood up and looked astonished at Thad. The man stood there naked, bleeding from his head, holding his ass with both hands. If he had not been so angry and out for blood, Thad would have thought this scene funny.
The man pointed at him, “You just fucked with the wrong guy,” he said. Thad stood there with the look of death in his eyes. “You just signed your own death warrant,” he said pointing his finger at Thad.
In a flash Thad was over the top of the bed, his feet crashing into the man’s chest, sending him into the wall again. He crumpled to the floor. Thad grabbed him by the neck and ran the man to the closed window at a run. Glass shattered and the man flew head first out the window. He would have gone all the way, but Thad caught his foot just before it went all the way out.
The man was dangling by one leg, his face cut to ribbons by the glass. Thad asked, “Where is Big Red?”
The man screamed, “Oh God, please don’t drop me! I’ll tell anything.” Thad shook the man like a rag doll. “He’s back on the ship! Now please pull me up.”
Thad had what he wanted so he simply let go. The man fell three stories, landing on his head, which cracked open like a melon.
Down on the second floor the other pirate, who had just finished his business and was lying in bed, heard the screams from upstairs. He jumped up from the bed and looked out the window just in time to see his buddy fall. “Oh shit,” he blurted out. The race was now on to see if he could get dressed and out of there before whoever killed his buddy came for him.
Kendra grabbed a robe and fled the room, leaving the door open. Thad raced down the stairs and saw Kendra’s door ajar. He stopped and listened to see if anyone was still in the room. He heard the sound of a body hitting the floor followed by some cussing. He carefully looked around the door to see a man with a sleeveless tee shirt hopping on one leg, trying to get his pants pulled up.
The pirate saw Thad enter the room, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” he yelled as he dove for the open window. He made it through the window and was able to drop down to the street level. He took off at a full run, barefooted, trying to hold his pants up so he would not trip over them.
Thad ran to the window in time to see the man’s pants slip from his hand. Thad watched as he tumbled a few times before regaining his feet. Steadying the pistol on the window frame Thad controlled his breathing and squeezed the trigger. The crack of the gun was loud, but not as loud as the pirate’s scream when the laser bolt burned through his thigh, snapping his femur.
Thad satisfied he was not going to get away, left the window, and made his way calmly down the stairs. As he passed the desk, he said to Xandra, “I owe you a window and a wall, but I kept my promise.” Xandra stared as he walked out.
Outside, the pirate had crawled about a half a block when Thad caught up to him. “You won’t get very far on that leg, here let me.” He stepped on the wound, twisting his foot as he did. The pirate screamed, but Thad did not stop. “Look, you sub-human piece of trash, you don’t remember me, but I remember you! Now you are going to take me to your ship and get me on board! Do you understand?”
The Pirate tried to be tough, “Go screw a pig! You can shoot me here, but I will never turn on Red.”
Thad pushed the barrel to the pirate’s forehead, “Okay then!”
“Wait!” the pirate screamed, “Okay, okay, I will take you. Just don’t shoot me.”
“Don’t worry I’m not going to shoot you,” Thad said, as he used the communicator chip in his head to instruct Archie to come carry the wounded man. Within a minute, the chrome plated robot jogged up. He picked up the wounded pirate, threw him over his chrome-plated shoulder, and followed Thad to the Space Port.
At the port, the pirate led them to the loading ramp of the Night Terror. It was not much of a warship. What it was, in reality, was a modified cargo ship with some armor welded on to the hull and old weapons badly mounted to the frame. Archie helped the pirate hobble up the ramp, Thad’s gun in his back and Archie’s steel hand clasped tightly around his nuts. At the door, the pirate pressed the call button on the door panel. A voice answered back, “Yeah, what?”
“It’s me, Jarvis, let me in.”
“Smack dog, you back already? I thought you would be gone a little longer. Don’t have the stamina anymore uh?” the voice laughed.
“Just shut up and let me in.”
The air lock door swung outward, the inner door was already open. Thad stepped through, grabbed Jarvis from behind, one hand on his mouth and the other on his shoulder and with one quick movement, he snapped the pirate’s neck. He quietly laid Jarvis on the floor. Thad whispered to the dead man, “I told you I wouldn’t shoot you.” He turned to Archie, “Follow me. I want you to scan each compartment ahead of us for heartbeats. I want to know where people are before I pay them a visit.”
Archie’s mouth lit up, “But what about your ocular implant? Shouldn’t your x-ray mode see through the walls?”
“You try switching your vision mode to x-ray,” Thad said as he started to walk down the poorly lit hallway.
Archie changed his vision mode and then tried to look through the walls, “I see, the walls are too thick.”
Thad shot over his shoulder, “Yep, kind of like your head.”
They made their way through the ship. Thad waiting for Archie to use his sensors to scan ahead and then giving the thumbs up or down before he would enter the next part of the ship. Near the engine room, they didn’t need the heart beat scanner. Someone was obviously in the engine room. The clanking of metal on metal was followed by a long string of cursing.
Thad entered the engine room to find the lower half of the ship’s engineer’s body sticking out from under the ship’s main power plant. Thad grabbed the man’s pant legs and pulled. He slid out, whacking his head on a crossbeam. “Ouch, what the fuck...?” He looked up and saw Thad’s face about an inch away from his. “Who the fuck, are you?”
Thad pulled the man up by his greasy coveralls, “What, you don’t remember me? You cost me an eye.”
The engineer’s eyes grew wide as the meaning of the words sunk in, “But, but you’re dead!”
“Hum, people keep on saying that,” Thad said. Looking around he saw a torch and some metal rods lying on the workbench. “Here, hold him,” he handed him off to Archie, who held the engineer with a vice-like grip.
Thad lit the torch and heated up one of the rods. The Pirate struggled against Archie’s steel hands. The robot’s golden eyes glittered in the light of the torch. Thad placed the rod millimeters from the struggling pirate’s eye, holding it there for a few seconds for maximum effect. Then he pulled it back and dropped it into a bucket of oil that was nearby. The engineer let out a heavy sigh and relaxed.
Thad saw this and said “Ah don’t worry, I’m not the kind of man who believes in an eye for an eye. I’m just going to kill you.” Urine ran down the engineer’s leg and pooled on the floor.
Thad looked down at the pool of urine. He looked up at Archie and shrugged his shoulders. He grabbed some tape off the workbench. Thad taped the man’s hands and feet together. Wrapping the tape around his head, covering his mouth, Thad gestured to the robot. “Archie, leave him here, we will come back fo
r him later.”
They searched the bottom of the ship without encountering anyone else. So, they moved up to the crew berths. Archie stopped Thad with a wave of his hand. He pointed to a door, “Two heartbeats behind that door.”
Thad tried the door, but it was locked, “Can you?” he pointed to the wall panel.
“Sure thing, just takes a minute,” Archie started punching in numbers. “I have to enter the override code and then,” click, the door unlocked. “You are in Sir.”
Thad opened the door, entering pistol first, not knowing what was on the other side of the door. He recoiled at the stench. It smelled of piss, shit, and vomit. It also had the faint iron smell of blood. The room was dimly lit. He could see little, so he quickly changed his implanted eye mode to thermal as he made his way further into the room. He could see two females, one lying on a metal shelf, which was being used as a cot. The other sat next to her, knees pulled up to her chest, head down. The sitting one heard him coming and jumped to her feet.
Her red hair was dirty and matted around her freckled face. She was dressed in torn filthy rags and looked no more than twenty years old. There was a metal collar around her neck with a heavy chain attached to it. The other end of the chain was attached to a metal loop in the wall.
“So who are you? The filthy sex slave buyer I bet, the one Red told us would be coming. I warn you, even if you buy us, we will not be your sex slaves! We would rather die first!” She placed her hands on her hips and spat at Thad.
Thad slipped the pistol into his belt at the small of his back and held up his open hands in a non-threatening manner. “Whoa there, I’m not here to buy you or do anything else to you. In fact, I’m here to help you.”
The girl looked confused, “You’re not one of Red’s buyers?”
“No, in fact, I was one of his victims too.” Thad took another step closer and the girl stepped away.
“How do I know I can trust you?” She asked.
“You don’t, but you have a choice to make. Come with me and take a chance I’m telling the truth and you will have a better life, and freedom or stay here and starve to death, your choice,” Thad said.
The young woman brushed her dirty matted hair out of her face, “Well since you put it that way I think we’ll go with you.”
Thad somehow found a smile, “Good to hear that, you are far too young to die. My name is Thaddeus by the way.” He could tell this young woman was beautiful under the dirt and grime on her face, and it pained him to see her treated like an animal.
“I’m Fiona and this is my twin sister Freya,” she pointed to the other woman lying on the metal shelf.
“I will have you out these chains in a jiffy,” he turned to Archie. “Archie, they look like magnetic locks, can you override them too?”
“Wait, what about Red? If he finds out we have escaped he will kill us all.” Fiona was terrified.
Thad put his arm around the frightened girl, “Don’t worry about him. He is going to be taken care of, and he will never hurt anyone again, I promise.”
There was a buzzing sound and both collars snapped open. Fiona tossed hers away from her as if it had been a poisonous snake.
“So how did you two end up here?” Thad asked, as he gently wiped the grime from her cheek.
Fiona sat down next to her sister and gently shook her shoulder to wake her, “We were with our parents on a cargo run. You see they were long-haul cargo jocks. They were taking us back to Earth where we were to attend college. We were about halfway there when we were attacked by the Night Terror. After a short battle, they boarded and captured us.”
She was trying to fight back tears, “At first we thought they would just take our cargo and leave us be, but those monsters forced us to watch as they raped my mother to death. Then for fun, they tossed our father out the airlock. The bloody murderers made bets on how long he would last before his blood boiled out his ears.” A large tear escaped and ran down her cheek.
Thad gently wiped the tear away. At first, she flinched at his touch, but then she placed her hand on his and squeezed it a little. Her eyes said thank you, even though she didn’t verbalize it.
She let go of his hand, “Red said we were worth way too much to be touched so he chained us to the wall and left us in here with nothing, but a bucket. That was two months ago and I didn’t think that we would ever be free again.” Freya started to come around.
“What happened to,” he was struggling to remember her name.
“Freya,” she said. “One of Red’s thugs thought that putting his manhood in her mouth was okay because he was not…”
“Soiling the merchandise,” her sentence was finished for her by Freya who was sitting up now.
“Well Hello Freya, I’m Thaddeus,” again he was able to rustle up a smile.
She looked at Thad, then at her sister “What’s going on?”
“It’s okay Freya; this man has come to rescue us.”
“Really?” She looked up to see Thad standing with a metal man next to him.
“Really,” Thad bent down and held out his hand. She took his hand and shook it. “Now you were telling me what happened to you.”
“Well, I’m not the kind of girl who would sit by and let a man do that kind of thing to me. Not after what they did to my mother. So I fought, and when he finally got that sinking, slimy piece of meat into my mouth, I bit down for all that I could,” she said with a hint of pride and defiance in her voice.
Fiona laughed, “You should have seen his face when she bit off his dick.”
“It was the worst tasting thing I have ever had in my mouth, but when I felt the warm blood in my mouth I knew he would never do this to anyone, ever again,” Freya said.
Fiona’s tone changed, “After she bit it off the man screamed and rolled around on the floor while his friends laughed at him. When Big Red heard what happened he came into the room.”
Freya took up the story, “He stood over the man and shot him in the head. After that, he ordered the others to toss his body out an airlock.”
Caught up in the story telling, Fiona took over again, “Red then beat her because, as he said, she cost him a good man.”
Thad nodded his head, “Well Freya, I think you did well, and if I were you, I would have done the same thing.”
She smiled at him, “Thank you.”
Thad stood back up to his full height, anger still burning deep in his steel gray eyes, “Archie I’m going to find that bastard.” Archie said nothing, just nodded. Thad tried to soften his voice as he said to the girls, “Hang in there just a little longer, your nightmare is just about over. It’s Big Red’s turn to face justice.” Thad stormed out of the room.
Big Red was in his berth, surfing the net for information on everything from cargo routes to the latest news on law enforcement in the outlying areas. He was so engrossed in planning the best way to squeeze Nome dry that he did not hear the door slide open. Red sat with his back towards the door, an easy target for Thad. He could have killed him a dozen different ways, but it was the thought of those poor young girls down below that stopped him from killing the scum out right.
Quiet as death himself, Thad crept up behind Red, leaned in close and whispered in his ear, “Hello Red.”
Red screamed like a frightened child, the tablet he was holding went flying. He spun around to see who had the balls to sneak into his ship and into his private quarters. He came face to face with the barrel of the gun. “Who the fuck are you? And how in seven Hells did you get in here?”
Thad could not resist, he pistol-whipped Red across the face “I will ask the questions here. Got it?”
Red, to his credit, took the blow without flinching, “You have some balls coming in here, too bad you won’t get to keep them long.”
Thad let lose another blow. This time, it tore open Red’s check and blood poured down his face into his great red beard. “You don’t listen well do you?” Thad said. He found himself unable to control his anger and
he struck him again.
Red spat out a tooth, “Okay, okay before you knock out any more of my teeth, who are you and what do you want?”
Thad, with the pistol still aimed at Reds head, “Well if you must know, you tried to kill me a few years back. You left me to die in the desert, with this in my chest.” He held up the knife that he had kept the last two years.
For the first time he saw real fear in Red’s eyes, “You were dead! I saw it myself. How can this be?”
“What can I say? It wasn’t my day to die,” Thad said as he threw the knife down, sticking it in the chair Red was sitting on, mere centimeters from his manhood. “You should learn anatomy better, you missed my heart. It is a few millimeters more to the left.”
Red was scared, but trying not to show it. However, he couldn’t hide his shaking, “Look if you want money or girls I can get you anything you want. I have a couple of real beauties down below, real hot, twins. You can have them, just let me go.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Thad fired. The laser bolt burned off Red’s right ear. Red let out a scream of pain. Holding the burned side of his head, he groaned, “Okay not the girls. Look, you can have your stuff. I kept it, all of it.”
Thad was not expecting this, “What stuff?”
“All the stuff we took off you, from your hotel room, I kept all of it. It’s in a box over there,” he pointed to a large chest in the corner covered with vid chips and porno disks.
Thad, with the gun still covering Red, walked over to the box and lifted the lid with his foot. He took a quick glance inside. Confused, Thad looked at the gear in the box. It was worth enough for Red to retire, “So why didn’t you sell it?”
“I tried, but no fence would touch it. I tried for six months to unload the stuff, nobody was buying, and then I found out why.” Red said still holding his burned head.
“Oh,” Thad said as he let the lid fall closed.
Red put his hand down, “Look, I may be a crappie criminal and a bad man, but I’m not so stupid as to mess with the Federation. It turns out your gear there traced back to a really nasty Federation black ops group. I have no deSire to bring that type of heat down on my head.” Red was trying to position himself to get something from the desk drawer.
