The Space Pirate 1 Read online

  Some of the figures in the streets and narrow trails were familiar to Charley. Her brothers were already at work, some of them meeting with gang members to discuss their strategies for the day, others moving silently on their own, depending on stealth and thievery to make their daily quota of credits. Doce and Trink were both skilled thieves and were more than capable of disappearing into little nooks and crannies around the town until they saw something worth stealing. As for the gangs, well they usually prowled on the edges of town and waited for visitors and strays with a few credits in their pockets. It was that or scavenge the wrecked starliner over in the dead wastes to the east of town. That particular hulk had been worked over for decades. It was doubtful there was any salvage left but every now and again new cache was found. The star liner was a creepy place, filled with the decaying corpses of all the passengers who had died when the ship was attacked by pirates.

  It was also a dangerous place for a single scavenger to operate in. A team was usually needed to help with ropes and hand boosts. The starliner was far too advanced for a lone scavenger like Charley.

  All she could do was try and find a cool, shaded hole and wait for an opportunity. Of course, nothing ever happened at Sandflower Downs and credits were often earned through brute strength and violence. If Charley was to avoid becoming a cheap whore for Boss Pete’s garbage men, she would need to think of something quickly. Charley knew a hovel that was relatively quiet during the day. A place she could crawl under and watch the main street in relative security. She found her secret place, trying to ignore a worrying hole she saw in the ground. The size of a credit chip, the hole was likely a scorpion nest and her body was less than a yard away.

  Perspiration already trickling down her forehead, Charley settled into position to watch the comings and goings in main street. A desert speeder cruised in around mid morning. It was Boss Pete’s personal vehicle but he wasn’t driving it today. One of his underlings stepped into the dust carrying a sack of supplies that were probably sourced from Zeba, the next town over. The man sauntered into a two-storey hovel with a red gas lamp hung outside the door. The whorehouse had its first customer for the day. About sixteen or seventeen girls worked that business. Many of them were Charley’s age or younger. The older women of the town had no prospects save for keeping house for whatever families they were able to hold together. Some kept a tighter ship than others. Charley watched the desert speeder in the street, She knew it would be DNA activated just as Matheson’s wrist pad had been. A bunch of youths ambled up to the vehicle and admired its smooth lines, leaning on the bonnet. Boss Pete’s man shouted from the upper level of the whorehouse.

  “Away, you sons of bitches!” he called. “Away from there!”

  The gangers moved away slowly, not wanting to appear cowed in any way. Of course, it was foolish to go up against any of Boss Pete’s men. That just earned you a bullet to the head. Charley felt a lurch when she saw that one of the gangers had a pistol holstered at his hip. The thing looked old, really old, and she doubted it was functional. Pistols and blasters that actually worked were rare in Sandflower Downs. It was rumored that Boss Pete himself carried twin pistols on each hip. It was said the pistols’ handles were carved from tarbor tusk. Real fancy like. Charley had only ever seen a gun fired once. A visiting water carrier had dispatched a lurking thief with a bullet to the chest. The kill had seemed so clean, so neat compared to the butchery often committed by the thugs of this town.

  Charley looked at the old, scarred pistol with intense interest. What if it actually worked? Would she have some kind of inferred protection with one of those babies on her hip? The ganger was now standing barely yards away from Charley’s position. She was no master thief but all it would take was a quick, light-fingered move and the dude wouldn’t even know his weapon had been swiped. In the end, the opportunity took hold of Charley and she extended her arm. Little did she know that the decision would set in train a series of events that would change her life forever. She would often look back on this opportunity as the one that not only saved her life but made her the person she always wanted to be.

  Feeling the inspiration of the moment she plucked the pistol from the holster and pulled it into the shade. The dolt’s holster was broken and hadn’t been fastened. Charley held her breath and only breathed out when the gangers walked away. She heard a soft scrabbling sound and turned to see a khaki scorpion emerge from the hole. Those things had lethal stings. With a lurch of fear Charley aimed the pistol and pulled the trigger. Click. The sound was soft but distinct. The scorpion went back into its hole but the gangers stopped in their tracks. Charley’s first thought was that the pistol must’ve been functional - the problem was it had no ammo. That was also a luxury item in Sandflower Downs. What was the point of ammo if there were no guns to be found?

  The ganger Charley had stolen from worked his way back to her hovel. Every instinct screamed at her to escape out the back of the hovel space but something rooted Charley to the spot. The ganger stepped to where he’d been previously, dropping to a crouch to peer under the hovel.

  “Bitch, you got my metal!” he exclaimed through a mouth of few teeth.

  Charley grimaced and immediately began shimmying her way backwards under the hovel. She reached the open dirt out the back and broke into a sprint over the mounds. She careened her way through piles of toxic refuse as the gangers made chase. The sun was already reasonably high and had Charley drenched in sweat in no time at all.

  Breathing hard, Charley tried losing the gangers around corners and through narrow alley ways. It was no use - the gangers were simply too fast. For starters, they wore heavy boots while Charley wore light desert shoes. Little more than slippers, they were no protection against the sharp edges of the corrugated iron fences she leaped over in a frantic effort to escape.

  The gangers had made much ground by the time Charley made it to the edge of town. There was nowhere to hide. Breathless and exhausted, Charley turned to face her pursuers, tossing the pistol to the dirt.

  “Take it,” she said between gasps. “I was only playing around.”

  The ganger retrieved his pistol and sneered at her.

  “Looks like we got some meat for breakfast, boys,” he snarled.

  The gangers approached without stopping. Fear took hold of Charley and for the first time she realized she was in dire straits. She couldn’t call on any of her brothers - they had dispersed throughout the far side of town and wouldn’t be seen again til sundown. That was assuming they’d lift a finger to help her. These gangers, many of whom were younger than Charley, looked like vicious little motherfuckers.

  All she could do was head further out into the arid salt pans and hope like hell that the gangers got too hot and bothered to continue.

  4

  Already feeling roasted by the sun, Charley made her way out over the hot, shimmering salt pan. On this side of town the salt pans stretched for miles. Right to the distant White Hills. Nothing but flat, crusty plain. Many a traveller had died on these pans only to be stripped naked by the denizens of Sandflower Downs.

  Charley slowed to a walk, her body screaming at her to stop. At that moment she would’ve killed for a drink. The sun of Abeyas tended to leech bodily fluids in minutes. It was the hottest, driest heat in the galaxy. Well, the second hottest. She’d heard the desert planet of Oboyo was pretty hot. But none of that helped her now.

  She dropped to her hands and knees, almost retching with dehydration. How long had she been walking for? Half an hour? Twenty minutes? The heat was quick to strike out here on the pans.

  Charley dared a look over her shoulder. The gangers were still there, unflinching in their black utility suits. Those suits were old and faded, but they still conferred much more sun protection than Charley’s linen shift. Even though the black color was heat-absorbent, they were old trooper suits of the Abeyas Navy. Charley wondered if the temperature controlling diodes were still working. What did it matter? She was thinking like she coul
d loot these fuckers. The reality was there was six of them. How could one silly, silly girl hope to beat them all? With nothing but a pistol that fired blanks? Charley would’ve laughed if her situation wasn’t so desperate. The crusted pan under her hands and feet felt scorching to her pink skin.

  She crawled a few yards further and collapsed in the meager shade of a tumbleweed. The weed was promptly shifted away by a tired gust of wind. Charley groaned. Was the entire universe against her?

  The worst thing was no one would see these gangers rape her savagely. Not out here on the pan. Not that it would matter much. There was no law and order in a place like Sandflower Downs. She’d heard there were some rudimentary laws in the Spacetown, the main port, but that was about it.

  The gangers stood over Charley and unzipped their pants, unwilling to waste time out here in the boiling sun.

  “How fucking dare you,” Charley spat, drawing on her last reserves of strength. “Who do you think you are? I’m one of Boss Pete’s girls.”

  The ruse didn’t work, just as Charley knew it wouldn’t.

  “You mean Boss Pete’s girls make a habit of cowering under hovels and stealing other folks’ weapons?” asked one of the gangers. Charley couldn’t tell which was which when they were standing silhouetted against the sun.

  “Touch me and I’ll fucking kill you,” she spat, inching her way backwards over the hot sand. “I mean it.”

  “I don’t think so,” said a ganger, already preparing himself.

  “You heard the girl,” said a gruff voice from somewhere behind Charley. “Let her be or you feed the salt pans here. Simple.”

  Charley allowed her hoped to lift a little. Was it possible a hero had emerged from nowhere, or was she just delusional from the extreme heat?

  “You’d better back away, old man,” said a ganger. “Six against two ain’t good odds.”

  “They’re better when one of the two is armed to the fucking teeth,” said the stranger. Charley heard a leathery sound and knew the stranger had drawn some kind of weapon.

  The biggest ganger stepped forward, perhaps to prevent the others from fleeing.

  “You don’t scare me, nomad,” he said with forced bravado. “If we rush you at once you ain’t got us all covered.”

  Charley swallowed. These gangers were showing more courage than they normally did. Just her luck. They probably saw an opportunity to have their way with her and loot this guy’s corpse. Such a payload might set them up for weeks.

  Charley risked a look at the stranger. Tall, gaunt, with fancy leather trousers and a gaudy vest. Bony, grizzled face half shrouded in the shadow cast by the wide-brimmed leather hat, tilted fashionably at an angle. The man had presence, that was for sure. He also smelled like a dead man walking. There was a corpulent whiff about him, a stench like rotting flesh. Charley wondered where he’d wandered in from. It was clear he had money. It was also clear he knew how to hold those pistols he brandished. No, they were blasters. Charley gaped at the modern tech. They were streamlined killing machines, capable of delivering plasma bolts in quick time.

  “You’re welcome to try, shit head,” the stranger said with slow confidence.

  “On my mark, boys,” the lead ganger said. “Three. Two.”

  The stranger primed his blasters with a weird high-pitched whine.

  “One.”

  The gangers rushed the stranger in a ragged line. What happened next was difficult to take in. The stranger fired rapidly, starting on the outward targets and drawing his blasters into the central corridor of fire. He didn’t waste a single charge. All six of the gangers were dropped in a cloud of red mist. Most lost their heads in the plasma fire, two had holes burned through their hearts.

  Charley crawled away from the stench that assailed her nostrils. Strong hands grabbed her wrists and dragged her across the salt pan for at least half a minute. Exhausted, Charley let herself be pulled. As far as she was concerned, surviving the gangers was enough for the moment. Of course, the strangers’ intentions may not be honorable at all, but she couldn’t let such thoughts invade her head. The movement slowed and Charley found herself deposited in the shade cast by a red desert speeder. The vehicle was an absolute beast, replete with six exhaust funnels and bulging with primer technology. Unfortunately it was leaking fuel to the salt pan. Before long it would be bone dry.

  “Went over a sharp rock,” explained the stranger.

  “Who are you?” gasped Charley, accepting a canteen from the man. She drank deeply. The water was pure and sweet, nothing like the bilge water folks were forced to drink in Sandflower Downs.

  “You can call me Silverton,” winked the man.

  “Silverton,” Charley repeated. “Sounds posh.”

  The man laughed, shaking his head ruefully. “If only that were true,” he said. “I had riches once, but you could never could my kind ‘posh’.”

  “What is your kind?” Charley asked, suddenly curious. The water had greatly revived her.

  Silverton hesitated. “Let’s just say I take what I want, when I want.”

  “Must leave you with a few enemies,” Charley countered.

  “Aye, girl, that it does. Which is why it’s good for a man to have skills.”

  “And what are yours?”

  “Full of questions, ain’t ya?” Silverton drawled. At any other time Charley might’ve found him attractive. He was lean and quite handsome in a pretty, angular way. He was also quite lethal, as he’d demonstrated earlier. What put her off him was the incredibly bad smell which was only getting worse.

  Silverton leaned against the speeder as if he was having difficulty standing.

  “Listen, girl, I don’t have much time,” he croaked.

  “Then you’d better start talking,” Charley said, slowly realizing that the man was dying.

  Silverton didn’t answer straight away. Instead he lifted his colorful vest to reveal a horrible sight. Half his chest was being eaten away by some kind of fungus. Some of his ribcage was visible through the putrid green flesh. Charley could only imagine the kind of pain the man must be chewing through.

  “Picked it up on Glasshouse Station,” he mused. “Fucking cheap whore got me with a tox-stick.”

  Charley gave a low whistle. Tox-sticks were one of the worst weapons in the galaxy. They gave the victim a corrosive fungus from the swamp world Amphib. There was no counter-agent to the fungus. The victim was left to rot until some kind soul put a bullet in them. This poor man had been dealt a shit hand indeed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, unable to take her eyes off the man’s gaping wound. “How long … how long …”

  “Before I croak?” the stranger asked with a mirthless smile. “Minutes. I thought I could reach my cache before my guts opened up completely.”

  Charley blinked. Clearly, that wasn’t going to happen. This man had lost his fuel and was now stuck in the middle of a salt pan. There was nothing to help him in Sandflower Downs either. What little medical supplies there were was controlled by Boss Pete. Silverton was more likely to be robbed than treated.

  “So what can you do?” Charley asked with genuine concern.

  Silverton eyed her with interest, his piercing green eyes looking her up and down. “You’re a tidy number,” he murmured. “If I wasn’t so toxic I’d sneak you away and ask you for a dance.”

  Charley couldn’t help but smile. The man was charming, she had to admit it. She sensed he’d seen much of the galaxy and had plenty of adventures.

  “Yeah, I just wish there was something I could do,” she said. She felt a peculiar sadness - this man had been around the block quite a few times and it seemed a whole lot of knowledge and experience was about to be snuffed out. How could she possibly do that justice in just a few minutes?

  Silverton seemed to read her mind.

  “Look, girl, there’s something I need to tell you,” he said. “I couldn’t help but notice you were in a spot of trouble over there. Feels good to get a few more kills under the be
lt before I croak.”

  Charley smiled at that.

  “Now listen. I got a cache in the Dusty Mountains and you officially have my blessing to go loot it.”

  Charley’s eyes widened. She’d heard of loot caches like the one Silverton was talking about. An entire lifetime of treasures and credits stored away by men like him. Bad men. Men who took what they wanted and never looked back.

  “Are you a pirate,” she found her herself asking in a tiny squeak. It sounded silly to voice the word but word had filtered through to Sandflower Downs that space pirating was all too real. Ever since the collapse of the Human Empire any kind of space run was fraught with danger. Most star systems needed to run their own security as pirates ran rampant.

  No cargo was safe in the galaxy anymore. But that wasn’t all. Pirates were known to feed slavery chains, extort and blackmail rich elites, run smuggling operations and generally be the scoundrels of the new galaxy order. With so many wars erupting across known space it really was the Golden Age of the Pirate. Or so they said.

  “Aye, girl, you smoked me out,” said Silverton with a bow. “My father was a pirate, and his father before him. In my pomp I captained a heavy frigate with two propulsion bulbs and plenty of firepower. WE owned the Beluga run. I have seven mistresses in four different systems. Plenty of one night stands besides. Before that fucking gutter snake cut me with a tox-stick I thought I’d live forever. But no. As soon as my crew saw the damage they cut me loose and all I had left was a need to see my cache one last time.”