The Iron Maiden

by Piers Anthony

  Brinker glanced briefly around the circle. No one indicated objection. She nodded. Then she made a gesture with her two hands, the classic hourglass shape. “Eighteen. Fire-hair. Face would launch a thousand ships. Imperious. Deadly.”

  There was appreciative laughter. “No wonder he wants her!” Mondy exclaimed. “There’s nothing like that in this task force!”

  Emerald slammed a backhand into his chest because of the presumed slight. It was her way of displaying affection. She was not ashamed to show it, now.

  It was a scramble to get ready for the battle with the Solomons. Hope had arranged with Straight to meet at a designated site in space, so that no inhabited asteroids would be menaced. There was a certain chivalric honor to it, but the battle itself would be serious. Emerald planned on her pincushion, but first invoked a remarkable open-space device that completely fooled the pirates and took out over half their deadly drones in a single sweep. Her genius was scoring.

  However, the Solomons were no pushover; they had cut off the Navy supply ship, and that was a serious reversal. Without those supplies, the fleet would soon be hurting.

  Then the situation changed: another pirate band, the Fijis, was approaching rapidly. They were not allied to the Solomons; they were coming in to clean up after the two combatants had decimated each other. This was bad news for both sides, for the Fijis were scum, even as pirates went.

  The staff held an emergency meeting without Hope. Repro, the Beautiful Dreamer, had a provocative notion: “We need to ally with Straight,” he said. “He is honest as pirates go, and stands to lose as much as we do.”

  “But we’re at war with him!” Emerald protested.

  “Not entirely. He is playing for an alliance, in case he loses the battle. That’s why he proffers his daughter to Worry.” He meant Hope. “He is into gambling, technically illegal, but only technically; throughout human history men have always gambled. We have no inherent quarrel with him.”

  “But he won’t just surrender,” Emerald said. “Why should he trust us?”

  “Because we must surrender to him,” Repro said.

  They stared at him. But after a moment Mondy nodded. “I believe it would work. He will trust us if we trust him first. And if his daughter marries Worry, the alliance will be secure.”

  “What?” Spirit and Emerald said almost together. Juana, too, looked shaken.

  “A woman can be a powerful incentive to join a cause,” Gerald said, and Mondy nodded. “In this case she will bring her band in with her.”

  “We don’t need any more whoring for personnel!” Emerald snapped.

  “Especially not when my brother is the whore,” Spirit agreed.

  But as the men argued the case, it came to make more sense, and in the end the women had to agree. It was a weird and risky ploy, but it stood the best chance of success in this adversity.

  They put it to Hope, without mentioning the prospect of marriage. “Sir, we have thrashed this out,” Spirit said, speaking with atypical formality. “We have concluded that our best course is to proffer our surrender to the Solomons’ fleet.”

  He found his gee-couch and sank into it. “Please say again?”

  “Straight is a halfway decent man,” Spirit continued, arguing the case Repro had made. “He generally keeps his word, and he’s not bloodthirsty. Go to him under flag of truce and present our situation.”

  He resisted the notion, understandably. But when he saw his staff unified behind it, he reluctantly yielded. “You won’t explain?” he asked almost plaintively.

  “After this crisis passes, sir, we will explain,” Spirit said.

  He sighed. “I hope you have not lost your collective wits! All of us will be court-martialed for pusillanimity when we are ransomed back to Jupiter. All of our careers will be finished.”

  “But we will suffer no further losses,” Emerald said. “We are thinking not of pride but of the greatest good.”

  Once resigned, Hope played the scene with his usual fair. He got Straight on the video and asked to parley under flag of truce. He went alone to negotiate the terms of surrender—and returned in due course with the pirate’s surrender to him, and Straight’s daughter Roulette with him in the shuttle ship as hostage.

  The ploy had worked. Straight had decided to trust Hope and his cadre of officers, after seeing their trust of him. His daughter was his earnest of integrity. And she was indeed mind-bendingly beautiful, exactly as Isobel had said.

  “This is Roulette—our hostage for the Solomons’ surrender,” Hope said somewhat lamely.

  Spirit didn’t bother to seem surprised. “I recognized the figure. I’ll see her to a cabin.”

  “You knew,” he said.

  “We thought it likely,” she agreed. “We showed Straight our power, and he responded.”

  “The game is not over yet,” Roulette said darkly. This was evidently no choice of hers.

  “Arrange for rendezvous with our supply ship and for transfer of food to the Solomons fleet,” Hope said. “Establish liaison for working out the fine print of the surrender. And quickly; the Fijis—”

  “I can help,” Roulette said. “I know the personnel to contact in our fleet, and what they need.”

  There was one reason Straight had sent her. Her cooperation would greatly facilitate the process.

  Spirit glanced at her appraisingly. “You have practical training?”

  “I’m my father’s S-3.” S-3 was the Operations section, which was vital.

  “At your age?”

  Rue smiled. “Pirates aren’t subject to Naval regulations. I’ve been an officer since birth. It’s a family corporation.”

  “We shall test you.” Spirit conducted the wench to an officer’s cabin. “You will be given the freedom of the ship,” she said. “You’re not really a hostage.”

  “So you say,” the girl said. But then she mellowed slightly. “Did you really castrate the man who raped your sister?”

  “He told you of that?”

  “Did you do it?”

  “Yes. And I would do it again.”

  “Then you understand pirate ways.”

  “Oh, yes. I was a captive of pirates for four years. Now the captain of that pirate ship works for us.”

  “I would like to meet him.”

  “Her. Isobel Brinker.”

  She pondered, but evidently drew a blank. “What was her ship?”

  “The Hidden Flower.”

  “Oh, of the Juclip! I thought a man commanded that one.”

  Spirit was surprised. “You know every ship by name?”

  “The significant ones. That one was a feelie porn conduit.”

  “The Empty Hand.”

  “That was one of the better lines.”

  “That was mine.”

  Roulette looked at her, surprised. “I think you and I will get along.”

  Spirit found herself liking this young woman. “But you know, we just took out the Carolines.”

  “Too bad, if you like porn.”

  “It’s pirates we don’t like. No offense.”

  “We don’t like the Jupiter Navy either. No offense.”

  Spirit changed the subject. “I will ask Captain Brinker to meet with you at her convenience.”

  Then Roulette did a double-take. “Brinker—age about fifty, red-brown hair, gray eyes, lightning draw?”

  “You have met?”

  “She bodyguarded Captain Hubris at the tavern. I didn’t make the connection when I heard the name. She looked so feminine.”

  “So she did. It is how she masks her past. I didn’t realize you two had interacted.”

  “She’s a captain again?”

  “She commands a ship for us.”

  “We will get along,” Roulette repeated.

  They got her set up in her cabin, then returned together to the communications center. “You’re S-3?” Spirit asked, giving her a chance to back down.

  “Try me.”

  Spirit did. She put h
er on the video contact. “Integrate our fleets.”

  When the first Solomons ship came on, the young woman evinced no uncertainty. “This is Roulette, hostage aboard the Navy flagship,” she said to the screen. “The Navy has food for us, and time is short. Get me Cap’n Snake-eyes on the double.” It went from there. There was no question of her competence.

  Spirit turned her head to look at Hope behind Roulette’s head, nodding affirmatively. But then Roulette herself turned to send him a glare of hate. She really did not like him, no matter how well she might get along with others. Rather, Spirit realized, she did not like the idea of having to marry him. But she would inevitably be captured by his subtle charm, as all women were. She fought, but would lose.

  And Hope, astonishingly, averted his gaze. She had stared him down. Oh, yes, he was already smitten.

  Meanwhile the Fiji fleet, seeing that they had broken off the battle with the Solomons, pounced instead on the planetoid where they had set up their pincushion defense, before abruptly evacuating. They had had to leave supplies behind, annoyingly. The pirates were scavenging, and the Navy couldn’t stop it.

  Spirit was unconcerned, knowing what Emerald had cooked up. “Call them, sir,” she told him. “Give the Fijis an ultimatum of immediate surrender—or destruction.”

  “But that would be foolish! We have no—”

  “Or delegate someone to do it.”

  “But—”

  “Roulette, maybe. She’ll enjoy this.”

  He spread his hands. “You delegate it.”

  She smiled knowingly. “Rue, would you like to deliver the Navy’s ultimatum to the Fijis?”

  Roulette came over to the screen. “I hate the Fijis almost as bad as I hate the Navy. But a bluff’s no good. They’re smugglers, and lying is their pride. Bloodstone would laugh in my face.”

  “Is there any redeeming quality about the Fiji?” Spirit inquired.

  “No. They captured one of our parties once, and sent us back their hands, one finger at a time, each one flayed. Our biolab said the skin had been pulled off while the fingers were still attached and alive.”

  Spirit stiffened, then slowly raised her left hand, showing her missing finger. “We have met that kind,” she said. “The Horse didn’t flay my flesh, though.”

  “I noticed. But you settled the score.” Roulette settled herself before the screen. “Is this a bluff?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll do it.” She went to work, and in a moment she was in touch with the Fiji operator. “Get me Bloodstone,” she snapped imperiously.

  “Who the hell wants Bloodstone?” the man demanded.

  “Roulette.”

  Another face came on: grizzled, grim, with earrings in the classic pirate style. “What you want, you luscious tart?”

  “Surrender this instant, or be destroyed.”

  Bloodstone bellowed out his laughter. “Listen, you juvenile slut, when I clean up Straight’s mess I’ll screw you to the damn bulkhead. You never had a real man before.”

  “I never had a man at all,” she responded. “Only with my knife. You have one minute to surrender to the Jupiter Navy.”

  Bloodstone just laughed coarsely, making obscene gestures with his hands.

  The minute finished. Spirit signaled a technician.

  The planetoid exploded. “We mined it,” Spirit explained.

  Roulette watched the expanding ring of debris in the screen. “Beautiful,” she murmured, licking her red lips. “You really don’t bluff, do you!”

  “No,” Spirit agreed.

  Soon came the next stage of the liaison with the Solomons: Hope’s marriage to Roulette. This was a horrendous event, because he had to rape her, which he didn’t want to do, and survive her knife attack. But Isobel Brinker was firm: this was the only way to fashion an enduring alliance with a pirate band.

  They rehearsed the abduction, with Juana playing the part of the bride. She was in a low-bodiced pink nightie that revealed somewhat too much of her lush torso, and when the light was behind her much of the material become translucent. Spirit and Emerald had presented Hope with a model who was guaranteed to turn him on, while being forbidden. She had a rubber knife to defend herself, but she was laughing so much she couldn’t even threaten him with it.

  Then came the rehearsal of the rape itself. Emerald played the part of the to-be-ravished bride. Spirit slipped the rubber knife to her. “You poor, innocent damsel,” she said in honey-drip tone. “I cannot stop my evil brother from this cruel assault, for I am only a woman, but at least I can give you some chance to defend your treasure.”

  “Bless you, sister,” Emerald said, smiling maliciously. “I’ll disembowel him!”

  “Hey!” he protested.

  But it was time for the humor to end. The threat was real, and Hope was all too apt not to take it seriously until too late, because of his crush on the wench.

  “Roulette will use her knife,” Spirit reminded him. “Don’t trust her for a moment, Hope; that’s how she got her other two suitors. She’s your enemy—until you conquer her.”

  Despite their best intentions, it was hilarious. He managed to disarm Emerald, but she managed to seduce him, in a fashion. The staff, watching, critiqued the performance, to make sure he would be able to handle the real rape properly.

  And of course the real rape, in the manner of a battle, turned out to be quite different from the rehearsal.

  Spirit, in her ritual guise as secret friend, slipped Roulette a knife, a real one, in accordance with pirate protocol. The girl accepted it, handling it quite competently. But she looked doubtful. “I’m not sure this is smart.”

  “Not smart?” Spirit hesitated to guess what she meant.

  “Spirit, I like you. You’ve had solid pirate experience. I don’t want to kill your brother.”

  “He’s a martial expert,” Spirit said. “He’ll disarm you.”

  “Maybe he could. But will he?”

  “We have rehearsed him. He knows what to do.”

  “He thinks it’s a game.”

  Spirit sat down beside her. “I know he does. He’s not a rapist. Should we stop this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how will we make the alliance both our sides need?”

  “Maybe we could get some other pirate girl. One who wouldn’t really fight.”

  “He’s already smitten with you.”

  “Damn it!” Roulette flared. “I’m trying to spare us disaster! That weakling’s going to die.”

  “If he does, we’ll return you safely to your father.”

  “You’ll do that?”

  “It’s the protocol.”

  “And you’re tough enough to follow it to the letter.”

  “Yes.” And she would, though her heart broke.

  “I wish I could marry you.”

  Spirit knew what Rue meant: that she had the iron gumption her brother lacked in this instance. “I wish I could rape you.”

  Roulette turned, leaned into her, and kissed her on the mouth. Spirit accepted it—and caught the girl’s knife hand as it moved. It was a feint, without real power, but move and countermove had been quick. They understood each other. Were Spirit a man, she could indeed perform the rape.

  “Look—you’ll be witnessing it.”

  “Yes, with video cameras. To prove you did not submit willingly.”

  “Be there physically too. Then you can overpower me before he’s dead. I’ll make the first strike non-lethal.”

  “No. It has to be played out straight, or it doesn’t count. You know that.”

  “It must be,” Roulette said sadly. “Once we engage, there’ll be no stopping it.”

  “Yes,” Spirit agreed. Then she stood and departed before her emotion overcame her. The girl had figured Hope correctly, and her chances of killing him were all too good, because he would hold back. It would indeed be better if Spirit could substitute for him, but she couldn’t.

  Then she went for the final ses
sion with Hope, to try to stiffen his spine. That was little comfort; he had somehow overlooked or blocked out the fact of the witnessing.