A Pirate's Life Read online

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  Alex discovers wrecked ship

  A Pirate's Life

  A Short Story

  By Al Macy

  AlMacyAuthor.com

  Copyright © 2017 Al Macy

  All Rights Reserved.

  Version: RC04 2018/06/28 13:03

  The pirate’s ship spun slowly as it drifted, five light years from the closest star. It looked like an asteroid, reddish with typical impact craters, but was more elongated than most. Cigar shaped. I kept my ship a kilometer away.

  “Wilson, you’re sure that’s the ship of this … uh … Jan Breck renegade?” I was the only living creature aboard—Wilson was the name I'd given my computer.

  “Dumb question.” He usually spoke to me as if to a dimwitted companion. His persona had evolved through artificial learning during the five years we’d worked together, locating and salvaging derelict starships.

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “Tell me why you’re sure.”

  “Three reasons,” he said. “First, the signature of the ship’s last jump suggested it would end up in this region of the galaxy—”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why would Breck come here?” I asked. “To escape, right?”

  “Probably. We’re a hundred and fifty light years from the closest occupied star system. The jump was dangerous, but capture was imminent. There wasn’t much choice.”

  “Second reason?”

  “The structure of the ship matches that reported in the last encounter with Breck. It looks Endish.”

  I gave a low whistle. “Nice.” I magnified the image, scanning along the surface of the craft. “Was it built to look like an asteroid, or is it an actual hollowed-out piece of rock?”

  “Unknown. It’s ten point two times longer than it is wide. No natural body in our home system has a length to width ratio of more than three. That suggests it was built from scratch.”

  My own ship was an aging salvage vessel—almost a derelict itself—shaped like a one-hundred-meter-long hen’s egg. Ninety percent of the interior space was cargo hold, currently—and depressingly—empty. I sat in the command center, a spherical space so small I could touch one side of it with my toes and the other with outstretched fingers. I’d devoted most of the room’s walls to viewscreens such that I felt as if I were sitting in space. Even with the twenty or so patches of dead pixels, the effect never got old.

  The rattle of an unbalanced fan and the smell of human sweat reduced the awesomeness, however. Worse, I’d salvaged a zoo transport ship a year ago, and despite an overpriced power wash of the cargo area, most of the ship smelled like a poorly maintained monkey house. Hard to ignore.

  “What’s the third reason you’re sure this is Breck’s ship?” I asked.

  “There is no third reason.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t count.”

  I ran my fingers through my unkempt hair and thought for a second. “Why the hell would you think that’s funny? It’s not even remotely funny.”

  “Two years, three months ago, on the afternoon of August 14, 2127, you told a joke. I will play it for you.”

  Here we go.

  From the speakers came my own voice, the words somewhat slurred. “There are three kinds of people in this world: Those who can count and those who can’t.”

  “No. Jeez. Wilson, that works as part of a joke, but—okay, forget it. We need this salvage. We’re two payments behind on Egg, and if we don’t get a good haul out of this—” I gestured toward the image of Breck’s ship “—Alex Hale Salvage will be out of business. You’ll be wiped.”

  “As I’ve told you before—”

  “I know. You don’t care. Tell me about this Breck guy.”

  “Gal.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “‘Gal’ is the female term that most closely corresponds to ‘guy.’ Breck is a woman.”

  Interesting. I thought about that for a while. I'd heard the news that Breck had been part of a mutiny, but that's all I knew. “Tell me her story.”

  “Jan Breck graduated at the top of her class at the naval academy, with a double major in aerospace engineering and cybersecurity. She served on multiple exploration missions. She was chief science officer on the starship Sunrise three years ago when the crew mutinied.”

  “Right, I remember that.”

  Wilson continued, “The captain and six crewmen loyal to him were crammed into an escape pod with little chance of survival. However, against all odds, the captain piloted the pod to an abandoned G-Plex outpost and those in the pod were rescued.”

  “What happened to the Sunrise?”

  “It was never heard from again. The mutineers, including Breck, were convicted in absentia and sentenced to death. She is the only one who has resurfaced. She’s singlehandedly perpetrated three piracy actions. She steals intellectual data and ByteCoin from the ships she attacks. She is thirty-five years old.”

  Huh. Same as me.

  “She has an 800K price on her head.”

  “A reward.”

  “Precisely.”

  I nodded. “Enough to pay off my loans.”

  “Quite so.”

  “And you think she’s inside that spaceship.” I gestured to the viewscreen again.

  “There is a single life-form aboard, but the signature is weak and not definitive. Also, life support is off.”

  “Dead or alive?”

  “The ship is dead.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “No, no. The reward. Does it pay even if Breck is dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Let’s find the door into the craft.”

  * * *

  Wilson went over every square meter of the faux asteroid’s surface. I ran my body through Egg’s wash-and-dry unit. Stupid, I know, but there was a small chance I’d soon come face-to-face with a real live woman my age. Sure, she was probably in some kind of coma, but I needed a shower anyway.

  I look okay for a down-on-his-luck scavenger. Tall and slim—I prefer the term “wiry”—I’ve avoided the dreaded spaceman’s muscle atrophy by sleeping in the two-g centrifuge every night. My face holds a perpetual single-sided smile—something I woke up with following a collision with a malfunctioning cargo drone. I could have it fixed, but apparently women like the devil-may-care look it gives me.

  Four hours later, I floated outside Breck’s ship in my best EVA suit, the one with the non-life-threatening leak. There was a pinhole somewhere in the suit, damn it, and I’d never succeeded in finding it.

  Breck’s ship bulged slightly near one end, as if whoever had loaded the cigar with tobacco had been sloppy. Wilson had located an elliptical seam obscured by the rim of a crater. I floated over to it, accompanied by one demolition and two stevedore robots. Egg loomed near us like an overly protective beach ball, revolving around the cigar with an angular velocity that matched its slow rotation. It felt as if we were stationary, with the universe of stars pivoting around us.

  Up close, the seam was obviously the edge of a large hatch. It was wide enough to put my gloved hand into it. At this distance, the surface of the craft was obviously man-made. Creature-made was the correct term. It wasn’t natural. Small indentations between interlocking hexagons covered the simulated rock.

  I held my helmet against the hull and listened. Raucous explosions met my ear. Faint and somewhat random. I took a hammer from my suit and banged on the hatch and the explosions increased in frequency and intensity. There was something familiar about them.

  “Wilson, do you hear those noises?”

  “I do.”

  “What are they?”

  “They are the barking of an Earth dog,” he said.

  “
But…” I looked out at the stars while listening some more. That’s why it had sounded familiar. I banged again with my hammer and got an immediate set of fast barks followed by slower ones: “Ruh, ruh, ruh, ruh, ruh … ruh … ruh.”

  I cleared my throat. “The temperature inside is close to absolute zero.”

  “Probably.”

  “But there’s a dog inside.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “And enough air to transmit his barking.”

  “Good reasoning, Alex.”

  “Don’t you patronize me!”

  Wilson said nothing.

  I worked my way around the edge of the hatch, holding myself against the hull by placing my hand in the seam and making a fist. No reason to waste propellant in my suit’s maneuvering unit. Halfway around, I found it: an emergency control for opening the hatch. It resembled the handle of a shovel. Symbols engraved beside meant nothing to me.

  I centered the light from my helmet on it. “Can you understand those symbols?”

  “I can.”

  “How does it work?”

  “Pull the handle out, and then rotate it ninety degrees clockwise.”

  I did so. Nothing happened, and then a ring of orange lights flashed around the periphery of the hatch. That was easy! I pressed my helmet against the surface. A faint honking noise reached my ears. “Looking g—”

  The hatch flipped open. Outward. With yours truly on top. Stupid! It didn’t open crazy fast, but quickly enough to send me tumbling off into interstellar space. Conditioned by years of working on a tight budget, I made some mental calculations. Cheaper to use my manned maneuvering unit to get back, or have the stevedore retrieve me? Clearly the former.

  “I’m handling it.” I babied the controls, conserving propellant, slowing myself down then accelerating back.

  Back at the hatch, I held myself against the lip and pointed my helmet light in. The airlock was big enough for four people, and the far end was transparent. Sure enough, on the other side, a dog was literally bouncing off the walls, barking its fool head off. It seemed fully acclimated to microgravity and never stumbled or missed a foot placement.

  “Okay, Wilson, I’m going in.”

  “You’re not concerned about the dog or about getting trapped?”

  “I need this salvage. I had a dog as a kid, and I can read its body language. It’s excited, not aggressive.”

  “You know it’s not really a dog, right?”

  I floated over to the handle-shaped controls in the airlock. “Translate these symbols and project the English onto my visor. What language is it?”

  “Endish.”

  I nodded. “So, you were right.”

  “I was.”

  The instructions appeared on my visor, overlaying the original text and fixed to the surface such that if I moved my head the letters stayed location-locked to the wall. The airlock worked as expected, although my heart jolted when the outer door snugged closed.

  The dog coordinated its bounces with the opening of the inner door. It had done this before. It flew toward me. I clenched my teeth. Uh oh. My confidence, based on its look, was misplaced. It wasn’t really a dog, no normal dog can survive at this temperature, so it could easily be a defensive device. A deadly watchdog disguised as a friendly pet, with disarming body language.

  But it slammed into me whining, wriggling, and barking. Nothing but joy. It began licking my helmet. I petted its head, grabbed a bit of loose skin on its neck. It felt like a real dog as far as I could tell through my gloves. It was some kind of a mutt, like a black Irish wolfhound but not so big. The fur was wiry.

  I took a close look at a forepaw that gripped the material on my spacesuit. It wasn’t a hand, but the toes were able to hold onto things. Pretty important in zero-g.

  “So, it’s a dog robot. A companion. Right, Wilson?”

  Dead air.

  “Wilson, do you read me?”

  Nothing.

  “Damn it, Wilson, that’s not funny.”

  Wilson’s voice filled my helmet. “Three years ago, on July seventh, you—”

  “I don’t care what I said or did. Don’t make that joke again. Now, tell me where the lifeform… never mind. I know where it is.”

  The robodog had bounded off then returned to me, barking.

  “Did Timmy fall into the well?” I asked. I had no idea what that meant, but it’s something my granddad had said whenever our dog acted that way.

  I followed the dog into a passageway. It was a hexagonal tube, barely wide enough to turn around in. I passed storage compartments separated from one another by rubbery protuberances that doubled as hand, or paw, grips. The ship was silent save for the dog’s barks and a ringing in my ears left over from a cargo explosion during my careless period. The faint smell of beer vomit in the suit was another reminder of that period.

  The corridor widened. Ah. The bridge. All the screen walls were dark. Two command chairs sat dead center, with physical controls set into the arm rests.

  The tone of Robodog’s barking changed. I turned. He sat next to something that looked like a two-meter-long jelly bean, orange with a mirror smooth surface. Universal robogrips sat on each end, and blinking text appeared in the center.

  I floated to it. “Wilson, am I now next to the lifeform?”

  “Affirmative.”

  I looked at the text projected on my helmet’s viewscreen: “Life support wasted.”

  Aargh. “Wilson, give me alternative translations for that last word.”

  “Debilitated, drained, crippled, weakened, frazzled, bushed, done for, enervated—”

  “Okay, I got it. Let’s get this back to our ship.”

  “This ship’s power was depleted by the long-range jump. I can recharge it.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s valuable, it’s ours, and we can’t jump it back to Griphon 9 if it’s dead.”

  “Okay. Do it.”

  * * *

  Back in Egg, the two stevedore robots fastened the jelly bean to a table in the medical cove of my main cargo bay. The cove was separated from the open cargo area by a Plastform lattice; large open spaces can be problematic in zero g.

  “Wireless data transfer is off. The pod is in airplane mode to save energy,” Wilson said.

  “Airplane mode” means that wireless communication is disabled. It makes no sense, but no one seems to know how the term originated. After a long search through my bin of cables, I found one that would connect the bean to our system. As soon as I plugged it in, a horn sounded and the entire pod flashed between orange and black.

  I stepped back. “What is it?”

  “The pod was in emergency battery-saver mode. Whatever is inside is dying.”

  “You mean Jan Breck.”

  “We don’t know that. That’s an assumption.” Wilson had that patronizing tone again. “Shall I revive it?”

  “Duh.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes. Revive it.”

  The pod changed to a pale maroon color, and the honking stopped. I ran my hands over the surface, looking for seams. There were none. “How long will this take?”

  “Unknown.”

  It ended up taking two hours. While waiting, I busied myself on a neighboring workbench, trying to repair a faulty ion pistol.

  I jumped when a blast from the capsule’s horn hit me. I spun around. The top of the pod swung open like the lid of a coffin. I hurried over to it.

  Gross. The thing inside was roughly human shaped and covered with a green fuzz, like something you’d find at the back of a refrigerator. The rotten smell overwhelmed my cargo bay’s eau de monkey house.

  I held my nose and leaned close to the head end of the body. A mistake. It sat up, knocking me in the forehead, dusting me with green mold spores. The form coughed then leaned over the side of the pod and retched. Nothing came out.

  I jumped back. “Are you Jan Breck?”

  The form was clearly human and decidedly female
. She wore nothing but the mold, resembling a child in a sprayed-on fuzzy green blanket sleeper.

  She raised her hand in a stop gesture, then lay back down in the pod.

  I leaned over. She moved her hand to her face and wiped off the fuzz as if clearing away cobwebs. She opened one bloodshot eye and focused it on me.

  I cleared my throat. “Can I get you—?”

  “Water.”

  At the sound of her voice, the robot dog popped out of its dormant state and launched himself off the wall. He acted the way he had when he’d met me in the airlock but multiplied by ten.

  She smiled for the first time, petted his head roughly, then gave him a subtle hand gesture. The dog floated to her feet and lay down in the bottom of the coffin.

  I brought her a water bottle. She sucked it dry.

  When I began wiping her face off with an oily rag, she snatched it, batted my hand away, and finished rubbing away the mold. The oil didn’t seem to bother her. She blew her nose on the rag.

  Her eyes were a dark brown, matching her hair which would have come down to her waist had it not been floating free in the no-gravity environment. This was indeed Jan Breck, based on the photos I’d seen.

  Her voice was raspy and weak. “What’s the date?”

  Wilson answered, “November 15, 2130.”

  “That your computer talking?”

  I nodded.

  “You a bounty hunter?”

  “I run a salvage company.” That sounded a little more grand than it was.

  “Where am I?”

  Wilson gave her the coordinates.

  She sat up again. “This place smells like a zoo. You got a shower unit?”

  “Yes. I can help you.” I reached out.

  “Down boy. Just keep your hands to yourself and tell me where it is. Sorry, yeah, I’m grumpy, but I haven’t eaten for seven months, and I feel worse than I look.”

  Breck floated herself out of the pod. She was either unconcerned about her nakedness, or felt that her green coating counted as clothes. Probably the first. The mold didn’t do much to disguise her curves.

  I pointed to the shower unit. I watched her fuzzy green ass while she floated toward it. She collided with the workbench.

  Huh! She’s good. I almost missed it.