Stealing Trouble

by A. K. DuBoff

  “But, you’re…” Triss looked her over, lingering on her sculpted hips and ample bosom. “I mean, you don’t look like you live in a waste processing tank.”

  Latrina glanced down at herself. “I don’t? What should a waste processing droid look like?”

  “Just like you!” Jack jumped in. “You’re everything I ever imagined.”

  She smiled sweetly at him. “You really think so?”

  He beamed back at her. “I had no idea we were living in the vicinity of such a beauty. You are stunning, and have a caring heart to match. How have our paths not crossed before?”

  “The previous crew of the ship requested I remain in the tank due to what they called an ‘unfortunate affect’.” She took a step forward.

  A moment later, an aroma or fermented cabbage and rotten meat wafted by.

  Jack struggled to keep his eyes from watering while he swallowed the bile rising in his throat. “Oh, you’re just lovely.”

  The ship’s mechanic robot, Morey, stepped up behind Latrina, carrying a spray bottle. “Might I suggest your spritzing treatment?” he asked. “There wasn’t time when you first emerged.”

  “Oh, thank you.” Latrina closed her eyes and held her arms out to her sides while Morey misted her.

  The previous stench was replaced by the scent of roses and honeysuckle.

  “Is that better?” Latrina ask. “You were very polite to not say anything. I know my work follows me around sometimes.”

  “How often do you need those, er, spritzings?” Jack asked.

  “Every hour or so. Why?”

  Jack nodded. “I can work with that.”

  “Stars, you can’t be serious?” Finn hissed.

  “Just look at her! I think I have a shot,” he whispered back.

  “Dude, she processes our poo.”

  “So?”

  “So?!” Finn gaped at him.

  “She has a lovely smile and seems very nice.”

  Alyssa patted him on the shoulder. “Jack, if you want to court Latrina, go for it.”

  “You don’t think that would be weird?”

  “Oh, I think it would be very weird. And kinda gross. However, you have the right to love whomever you want.”

  “Whoa, whoa!” Jack held up his hands. “I didn’t say anything about love. We just met.”

  “Well, whatever it is, more power to you, I guess,” Triss said.

  “Just… be sure to keep up on the spritzings, okay?” Alyssa requested.

  “Yeah, no need to convince me.”

  “You’re all insane. You know that, right?” Trent interjected from his prone position on the deck.

  “And we wouldn’t change a thing.” Alyssa glared down at him. “You can mull over your own faults while you rot in prison.”

  Jack and Finn pulled Trent to his feet.

  “I’ll come for you!” their captive threatened.

  Alyssa snorted. “Yeah, good luck with accomplishing that from Hellena.”

  Trent’s face paled. “That place is impossible to break out of.”

  Jack and Finn exchanged glances.

  “Yep, totally impossible!” Finn replied.

  “You can go wait on the Little Princess II,” Alyssa told Latrina and Morey. The two artificial lifeforms disappeared through the umbilical.

  Triss placed her hands on her hips when they were gone. “Well, I guess we didn’t need Compe—” she caught herself, “—the Vorlox to save us, after all.”

  “You called the Vorlox?” Trent’s eyes widened. “How…?”

  Alyssa smirked. “We’ll let them explain that.”

  A flash caught Jack’s attention out the window next to the umbilical hookup. Where there had previously been open space, a massive ship with huge guns and dorsal spikes had appeared, and it was facing off against Trent’s Vorlox imposter ship.

  “Hey, they’re here!” he cheered.

  Alyssa frowned. “Why are their weapons charged?”

  Triss took a step back from the window. “And why are they turning to face us?”

  The guns on Competron’s Vorlox ship glowed blue with electrical energy.

  “Stars, that’s right! We were supposed to evacuate on the escape pods,” Triss remembered.

  Panic rose in Jack’s chest. “You have to tell them we’re still here on the ship!” He pointed toward a communication panel on the interior bulkhead. “Quick!”

  Alyssa raced to the panel. “Damn, it’s locked! What’s the password?”

  Trent scoffed. “You’ll never guess it.”

  Jack ran toward the door leading into the rest of the ship. It slid open, revealing Larry waiting on the other side.

  “Is the fight over?”

  “Yes. What’s the password for the comm system?” Jack asked him.

  Larry blushed. “5, 4, 3, 2, 7.”

  “5, 4, 3, 2, 7!” Jack shouted back to Alyssa.

  She entered in the combination and started hailing the Competron ship.

  “Why do you look so embarrassed?” Jack asked Larry. “I’ve seen worse passwords.”

  The other man sighed. “That 7 was supposed to be a 1. It was a bad font.”

  “Wait, so you wanted 5, 4, 3, 2, 1?”

  He nodded slowly.

  “Super secure.”

  “Yeah… Trent wanted it to be easy to enter in a hurry.”

  “So why not 1, 1, 1, 1, 1?”

  “That’s what I said!”

  Jack scoffed. “Why don’t they ever listen to us?”

  “I don’t know! It’s like they think all of our ideas are bad just because we’re not the team leader.”

  “You know what? We don’t need to take this!” Jack placed his hands on his hips. “It’s time we take change.”

  “You’re right!” Larry rose to his full height, his eye hard with determination. He was silent for a moment. “What do we do, exactly?”

  “We…” Jack’s gaze rested Alyssa in the midst of an urgent conversation on the comm. “We tell them that we have Trent in custody and have evidence of new crimes.”

  “What evidence?”

  “All this booty and your testimony.”

  Larry pursed his lips. “Won’t they take the art and gems?”

  “Well, technically, Trent only stole the gems. But, we’re turning him in, so we’d get a reward, right? I’m sure they’d let us keep everything.”

  “I’m not sure it works that way…”

  “It’ll be fine, go!” Jack shooed him toward the comm.

  They ran up to Alyssa.

  “…Yes. Okay, understood,” she said, then ended the communication. Turning to Jack and Larry, she gave them a quizzical look. “What are you doing over here?”

  “Saving the day!” Jack declared.

  “I already talked to the Competron leaders. We’re good.” She pointed out the window at the ship. It had redirected toward Trent’s ship designed to look like the real Vorlox vessel. Several escape pods had launched from Trent’s ship.

  “But we wanted to do something,” Jack protested.

  “You can be the ones to hand Trent over. And, Larry, part of the agreement was for you to testify against Trent, hope that’s okay. Oh, and we’ll need to hand over the gems, but I left out the art, so we can keep that just like we planned.”

  Jack blinked. “Wait, that sounds like exactly the same plan we came up with.”

  Alyssa shrugged. “Well, yeah, what else would you do?”

  “I dunno, but I expected there to be some sort of epic argument about the best way to proceed, and then I could prove my point and do it, and I would be the heroic one for a change.”

  “You did good today, Jack, untying us with your weird button-cutter-things. I’m glad to have you on our team.”

  “Oh, that’s how you got free!” Larry interjected.

  “Yeah, one of my better SpaceMall finds, turns out,” Jack replied.

  Larry nodded. “I guess I’ll have to resubscribe.”

  “Was
there anything else?” Alyssa asked.

  Jack thought for a moment. “I guess I wanted to see something get blown up. You know, some sort of big finale for our latest adventure.”

  Alyssa smiled. “I hadn’t told you the whole plan. Look out the window.”

  Jack followed her instructions.

  Outside, the Competron ship had pivoted to broadside Trent’s imitation vessel. With a flash of blue, crackling energy beams lanced toward the abandoned craft. They sliced through the hull, leaving smoldering shreds of metal on its wake. The beams concentrated on the core of the ship, near the main reactor. After three seconds of focused fire, the reactor detonated, producing a shockwave that rocked the Thrasher underfoot for a moment until the stabilizers compensated. When the wave passed, only shards of the former imitation Vorlox vessel remained.

  “Satisfied?” Alyssa asked.

  Jack shrugged. “Yeah, that’ll work.”

  CHAPTER 12: Onward!

  — — —

  “Why’d they blow it up?” Jack asked, surveying the ship debris. “I thought maybe they’d want two Vorlox vessels.”

  Alyssa chuckled. “Get this: the menacing façade was just that. They ran a quick scan, and it appears Trent ran out of money for the retrofit. Underneath the skin, it was still just a factory ship.”

  “What did they make?” Jack asked.

  “Purple leopard print fedoras… with a brown plaid band and orange feathers.”

  “Ew. And oddly specific.”

  “Modern market is crazy. It’s amazing what people will pay for.” Alyssa shook her head. “Anyway, Grant just told me that the interior decorating of the ship took that aesthetic to heart with the overall design. Competron deemed it unfit for human occupation.”

  Jack let out a long breath. “Getting rid of that ship sounds like it was doing society a favor.”

  “My thought exactly.”

  A moment later, the communication console beeped with an incoming video call from the Competron ship.

  Alyssa answered. “Good riddance to that ship, thank you.”

  “We’ve held up our end of the deal, now it’s time for yours,” Grant replied over the monitor. “Hand over Trent. And we’ll need Larry to come in for his official statement.”

  “They’re right here.” She pointed her thumb over her shoulder in Trent’s direction and motioned to Larry standing just off-camera.

  Jack ran over to stand within the video’s frame, dragging Larry with him. “We’re the heroes!”

  Grant glanced at Alyssa and then back to the new arrivals. “That’s not relevant.”

  “It’s very relevant,” Jack replied. “I freed us, and then we shot some people, and then we got the stuff, and now we’re here.”

  The Competron executive scowled. “Who did you shoot?”

  “Not important,” Alyssa hastily cut in, shoving Jack aside. “We’re just trying to be good, upstanding citizens.”

  “Hence the donating of those gems from Vincent Ordello’s private collection to charity?” Grant said, eyeing her.

  “Right, that…”

  “I don’t suppose we could renegotiate handing those gems over to you?” Jack asked tentatively, popping back into the frame.

  “It’s in your best interest to agree to the terms as stated.” Grant paused. “To be blunt, it would be bad for your new Spacecups business if it came out you were involved in any nefarious activities. I imagine you’d prefer that today’s events remain off the official record.”

  Alyssa shoved Jack away again, then crossed her arms. “In other words, you’ll keep quiet about what we did if we pay you off?”

  Grant shrugged. “That’s one way of putting it. It’s for a good cause—helping the children, and all.”

  She sighed. “When you put it in those terms, I guess we don’t have a choice.”

  Grant smiled. “I’m so glad this business arrangement is working out as well as I’d hoped.”

  “Yeah, I bet,” Triss muttered just loud enough for Jack to hear without the microphone picking it up.

  “Better than us getting warrants back right after they were cleared,” Jack whispered back to her.

  “I guess.”

  “Regarding Trent,” Alyssa continued, “I’ll need your guarantee that he won’t be swapped out on Hellena. He deserves decades in there, and I want to make sure he serves it.”

  Grant have her a quizzical look. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘swap out’.”

  “Let’s just say that they could improve their operations,” she replied.

  “Sure, we’ll put in the request for ‘no swap-outs’, whatever that means.”

  “Thank you. We’ll send Larry and Trent on a shuttle your way with the gems in a moment.”

  “We’ll be waiting. Stay out of trouble.”

  Alyssa smiled. “No need to worry about us.” She ended the call. “What were you thinking?” she yelled at Jack as soon as the comm channel was deactivated.

  “Geez, I just wanted a little acknowledgement.”

  “We’ll get you a cake. How’s that?”

  Jack took and step back and crossed his arms. “Fine, but it has to be chocolate.”

  “Okay,” Alyssa agreed, then turned to Larry. “Let’s get you situated on a shuttle. Thank you for helping us; we owe you.”

  “I’d been looking for a way to sever ties with Trent. I’m glad this worked out for all of us,” he replied.

  “Best of luck in your next ventures,” Jack said. “Be sure to explain the Little Princess theft to Svetlana, if you see her. I don’t think she ever believed that I didn’t steal it.”

  Larry smiled. “I will.”

  They gathered up the gems in a bag for Larry to transport over to the Vorlox vessel and secured Trent to the deck of the shuttle’s cargo area.

  Once they’d seen the shuttle on its way, the Little Princess II crew surveyed the carnage in the Thrasher’s cargo hold.

  “What about the bodies?” Jack asked.

  “Not our ship, not our problem,” Triss stated.

  “I agree with that perspective,” Finn replied.

  Alyssa nodded. “We leave it. Either Larry or Competron comes back, or this ship will be their tomb. We already have our ship.”

  With that, they gathered up their art canvasses and headed through the umbilical to the Little Princess II.

  Latrina and Morey were waiting for them in the cargo hold, where the umbilical connected.

  “Do you require my services at this time?” Latrina asked when she saw them.

  “No, thank you for your help. You can go back to your tank,” Alyssa said. She set the canvass art rolls on a table next to their shuttle.

  “Yes, Captain.” Latrina turned to go.

  “Wait!” Jack called after her, running over.

  She turned back. “What can I do for you, crewman?”

  “Call me ‘Jack’, please.”

  “Yes, Jack. How may I serve you?”

  “I don’t want you to serve me,” he replied. “I was wondering if you might like to spend some more time out of your tank—you know, after spritzing, of course.”

  Latrina’s green eyes lit up with internal LEDs. “Come visit as a crewmember, you mean?”

  “Yes. And, maybe we could even spend some time getting to know each other.”

  She hesitated. “I explained what I do on the ship.”

  He smiled back. “You did, and that doesn’t bother me. You saved my life, and that means you’re someone I’d like to get to know.”

  A grin split her face. “I’d like that very much, Jack.”

  “Great!” Jack glanced around the room. “Um, how do I get in touch with you?”

  “Just send a message to latrine@littlepricess2.net.”

  “I thought your name was Latrina. Did I mishear you?”

  “No, the contact address is my job function. Morey is mechanic@littleprincess2.net.”

  “Ah.”

  Latrina looked down and move
d the toe of one foot in small circles on the deck.

  “I think it’s great you have a career,” Jack said.

  She looked up. “You do?”

  “Yes, and I look forward to hearing all about it—well, maybe not the details. Or any of it. But I look forward to spending time with you and learning about the you outside of work.”

  “Thanks, me too.” With a parting smile, she sauntered toward the waste tank access hatch.

  “I can’t tell if that was sweet or one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen,” Triss stated.

  “She’s hot for a droid, can’t argue that,” Alyssa observed.

  “Even still… I mean…” Finn trailed off.

  “I bet you she’s the hardest-working member of this crew,” Jack replied.

  “There is that.” Alyssa headed for the ladder up to the main living deck.

  The others followed.

  “That was a hell of an op!” Finn exclaimed once they were on the main level.

  “I can’t wait to unload this art.” Triss smiled. “I’ll reach out to that fence contact of yours, Finn.”

  Jack began mentally spending his share of the loot, thinking about how he could order a pair of purple shoes to alternate with his gold light-up loafers. Perhaps he could even splurge and get the electric blue. Then there were all the outfits he could get for Latrina to wear when she came out of the waste tank to visit. He could even pick up some more gadgets to stash in various compartments around his jacket. His eye sparkled with glee as he thought through the possibilities.

  “Oh… that’s not good,” Triss said, looking up from her tablet.

  Alyssa sighed. “What now?”

  “Um, that fence just told me the black market art scene has taken a downturn after a critic commented on Merica’s vlog about Vincent’s nude portrait, sparking a realization that, and I quote, ‘most of it was meaningless shit and artists should go back to painting more mountain landscapes or something’.”

  “I told you so,” Jack muttered under his breath, his heart sinking as his shopping dreams evaporated.

  “Even the painting of Vincent that everyone wanted to burn?” Alyssa asked.

  “Unfortunately, ironic art purchases are now among the worst offenders.” Triss groaned and leaned against the wall.

  Finn took a slow breath. “So, let me get this straight… we now have half a dozen worthless pieces of canvass, and we just handed over twelve million worth of jewels.”