Pirate

“Let me get this straight,” I said, pressing pause on Rain Man, which I’d been watching for an hour. “You’re going to go meet with a pirate.”

Captain Ryan smiled. He smiles loudly; I could hear it behind me. “Yep. When I said, ‘I’ve got a meeting with a pirate,’ that is what I meant.” Next to me, First Officer Smith snickered softly.

“And may we know why we are meeting with a pirate?” I asked.

“First, we are not. I am. Solo mission this time. Second, I think the pirate has a job lined up that I’m very eager to take.”

“But if I don’t go,” I protested, “I won’t be able to write anything in my journal about the mission.”

“I’ll take notes,” he replied.

“And since when do pirates offer us jobs?” Smith asked.

“I’ve known this particular pirate for some time,” Ryan answered, “and I believe it’s a search-and-rescue operation.”

“Well, what could possibly go wrong?” I muttered.

“Well, we’re almost to Downbelow Station,” Smith said. “They’ve got a berth for us. You know where you’re going once we get in?”

“Not exactly, but I’ve got the name of a place. Should be easy enough to look up on a directory when I get there. She said she’d feel more comfortable meeting at her place.”

“Her place?” I asked.

“Girls can be pirates, too,” he retorted.

“Her place?” Smith asked.

“Her place of business,” Ryan countered. “She owns a kind of restaurant.”

“A kind of–” I started.

“Yes, a kind. It’s called Black Amy’s Whorehouse and Grille,” he said.

I was distracted for a moment, because Shandra had stopped punching final approach instructions into her console and was apparently trying to swallow her own face. The result was a lot of sputtering, combined with some words I hadn’t realized she knew. A made a note to look up a couple of them later. “You okay?” I asked as she settled down.

“I am not okay,” she said, “and we will not talk about it here.”

“Okay, well, I’m going to go down to the skiff and grab a few things,” Ryan said, referring to the heavily customized, nearly antique search-and-rescue vehicle that snuggled up to the underside of the Troll. We did not refer to it as Little Troll in his hearing.

“I’m going to go down with you,” Smith said, standing from her console. “We can talk there before you go.”

I took over bridge operations while the two of them walked out, and finalized our approach into the station’s berth. “I do not enjoy being left out of the conversation!” I yelled to their backs. I toggled the shipwide comms on monitor-only mode. I’ve been told that eavesdropping is wrong, but I’ve never really bought into the concept.

“I’m going with you,” Smith said. “And that’s not up for discussion.”

“I can totally handle this myself,” Ryan said.

“This has nothing to do with whether you can handle this or not,” she said, “which you cannot. This has to do with the ship and the crew. Have you actually met this pirate before?”

“No, but we’ve done more than a couple of contracts. She’s legit.”

“I’m going with you,” she said. There was a tone of finality that did not invited commentary or dispute.

“Fine,” he said. “Just step out for a minute and let me change.”

“Change?”

“I’m not going to this meeting in coveralls,” he growled.

“Fine.” I heard her step out of the skiff and stand for a few minutes, tapping her foot. Then: “how long is this going to oh, my God. What are you wearing?” It was killing me that I didn’t have a video feed.

“What?” came Ryan’s voice.

“You look like a pirate whoreoh, I get it.” I’m pretty sure I knew the outfit she was talking about: flowing white shirt, tight at the cuffs, unbuttoned to the navel. With any luck, he’d strung a bunch of fake gold chains around his neck and had a gaudy ring on every finger. “Oh-kay. Well, I suppose let’s go.”

The two of them left the skiff, and I tracked them moving into the Engineering hull, which is where we were connected to the station. I didn’t trust Buzz to take notes. Instead, I engaged a failsafe protocol I’d developed several months prior. As they passed through Troll’s external lock, a small blast of pressurized air launched a discreet bug at each of them. The bugs immediately started transmitting on a cycling, encrypted communications channel, which I promptly opened on my console on the bridge.

“Here, get in,” Smith said.

“Why? We can probably just walk it,” Ryan replied. She must have steered him toward one of the enclosed runabouts that station personnel tended to use to zip around the place. I started poking around in the station’s communications operating system to see if I could pick up a video feed of them.

“We can’t,” she said. “I looked it up. Get in, I’ll drive. You can just tell your pirate friend that I’m your driver.”

“Okay, fine,” Ryan said. There was some rustling as they seated themselves.

“Oh,” Smith said. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

There was a thumping noise. “That,” she said. “It’s for your own good.”

There was no reply. I started to suspect she’d knocked him out somehow. My bugs provided rudimentary location-tracking, and I superimposed that signal over a floorpan of the station. Smith drove for about ten minutes, into a section of the station that appeared to consist mainly of restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues. There was some rustling as she got out of the runabout. I still hadn’t figured out the station’s video feeds.

“Um, sis?” came a voice. Not Smith’s. “I thought I must be losing my touch, but it sure felt like you.”

“Hey, Amy,” Smith said. “This is Captain Ryan of the Icelandic Troll.”

“Wow, no shit? You work with him?”

“Yes, and I think we should talk a bit. The tap I gave him won’t last long, though–any chance you have a…?”

“Oh, yeah,” Amy said. There was a sharp hissing noise, and I presume that the Captain had been tranquilized. “Here, let’s go in the side entrance. That’s my office.” The following sounds were consistent with them stepping through a metallic door and into an enclosed, fairly small space.

“What’s this job, Amy?” Smith asked.

“It’s nothing complicated, and it’s not even totally illegal,” came the reply. “There’s an old ship hulk in the next system over that contains something I’d very much like to have.”

“Recipe cards for this ‘Whorehouse and Grille’ you’re apparently running?”

“Hey, these girls are professionals and they’re here of their own free will. And no, it’s not recipe cards,” Amy said. “The ship was an old troop transport that took one too many hits, and so it was abandoned.”

“A Starfleet troop transport?” Smith asked, incredulous. I’d never heard of such a thing either. Starfleet tended to use dreadnoughts and cruisers if they needed to move Marines around.

“No, local system militia,” Amy replied. “Not even warp-capable.”

“Is whatever we’re supposed to be retrieving legal?”

“Possession of it is not illegal in this system.” That seemed weirdly specific.

“Is this old ship hull unclaimed, or is it claimed by you?”

“Neither of those.” Ah. That’s why she needed us to go in. We could probably fake up some salvage orders. I started working on that on my padd, while continuing to try and crack into the station’s surveillance systems.

“Amy, how long have you been running out of Downbelow?”

“About six months. This will actually be my last job here. A couple of the girls actually saved up enough to buy me out of this place, and I’ll move on.”

“Amy, we just ran into Powhatan not too far from here. She’s on patrol, and she’ll likely be through this system soon,” Smith said.

There was a pause. Then: “Shit. Mom will know I’m here.”

“Yes. And whilst many blind eyes have been turned toward you, I think at some point you’re going to run out of rope,” Smith said.

“Yeah,” Amy said quietly. “Okay. But I need to do this job. Look–can I just talk to Ryan?”

“Talk,” Smith said. “Just talk. You’re not going to kill him?”

“Should I?”

“No, you should not,” Smith said heatedly. “And he–we–can’t take this job. It would create a lot of complications I’m not ready for right now.”

“But–”

“No,” Smith said emphatically. “We’re going to wake him up you’re going to tell him that the job is off, and we’re going to go on our way. And then you’re going to get the hell out of here before Mom shows up with all her Starfleet wrath and stuff.”

There was a pause. “Fine,” Amy said sulkily. “I’ll wake him up, and you can help me get him back here. Then we’ll talk.”

Lots of noises ensued, including a good amount of invective from the now-awake Captain Ryan. I finally figured out that the godforsaken station, which must seriously have been the oldest one we’d ever been to, didn’t have a video surveillance system. Damn.

“Whatthefumph,” came Ryan’s voice.

“She knocked us both out,” Smith said. Huh. She didn’t lie much. “We’re at her office, now. I think you took a bigger dose than I did.”

“Oh, my head,” Ryan said. “Okay. Okay. Where–”

“Just step inside, Captain,” came Amy’s voice, “and we’ll get down to business.” It sounded like they all moved back into her office. I got the same enclosed-space feeling from the bugs.

“I like your outfit,” Amy said. “It’s very dramatic.”

“Oh, why thank you. It’s–”

“Can we just get down to business?” Smith said.

“You let your driver speak for you?” Amy said sharply.

“Uh, my driver–uh, no. Hey, you’re Klingon,” Buzz noted. Interesting.

“Half Klingon,” Amy said. You could hear the smile in her voice.

“Those are interesting piercings,” Buzz said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen piercings on cranial ridges.”

“I’m guess you haven’t met very many Klingons,” Amy said. Definitely a smile in her voice.

“Uh, no, I guess, not really,” Buzz said. He was kind of stammering, which was weird. Usually he was all bravado. Must have been lingering effects from the tranquilizer.

“Well, Captain–can I call you Buzz? Well, Buzz, let me show you what it is I’m hoping you can help me retrieve.” I swear, I could hear Smith’s molars grinding. This didn’t sound like what they’d agreed to. I heard some paper rustling, and then a long silence. I imagined she was showing them a printed photograph.

“We’ll take the job.”

That was Smith’s voice.

“This is a bad idea,” Amy said. She was standing on the bridge of the Troll, kind of wedged between the Captain’s retrofitted command chair and the port bulkhead. Smith and I were at the main console. We’d loaded a large cargo container into our salvage bay, and strapped it to the bay’s aft bulkhead.

“This is a good idea,” Smith said. “Starfleet’s due through this system any time now, and I certainly don’t think you want to be here when they show up.”

“Oh, yeah,” Amy muttered.

“Powhatan would never dock at Downbelow Station, though,” I pointed out. “It’s unlikely they’d come looking for you if they didn’t have a strong reason. Like a Federation warrant.”

“Weellll…” Amy said.

“Or are you just concerned it’s because the Captain is your–”

“Eyes front!” Smith snapped, cutting me off. “We need to be in warp in the next five minutes, and once we’re on-site at this salvage job, we’re going to need to be alert.”

And what else did you happen to hear? came a soft voice in my head. My head whipped around and my eyes shot daggers at Amy. “Keep. Out.” I growled.

“Hey!” Ryan said from his command chair. “Black Amy is our guest, and she’s as welcome on the bridge as I am.”

I turned back to my console, enduring the daggers coming my way from Smith’s eyes. “You did not,” she muttered through clenched teeth.

“Of course I did,” I replied, somewhat louder. “I can’t be effective if I’m not informed. And I’ve got those salvage orders that you asked about all ready to go.” I’m pretty sure she dented her console where she was gripping it. Smith’s pretty strong. “Course laid in. Ready for warp speed.”

“Warp factor three,” Ryan said. “Punch it.”

I punched it, and the Troll leapt into warp. We’d only be in warp for a few minutes; our target system was only fifty or so light years away. In the meantime, I decided to poke a bit more.

“So, Amy,” I said, not turning from my console, “where are you originally from?”

I felt a wave of… I dunno, I guess it was feminine wiles or something, float over me. I grinned. That wouldn’t have any effect. “I’m a Federation citizen,” she said.

“Enough chitchat,” Smith said. “Watch one of your Tom Cruise movies or something,” she added.

“No time,” I said. “We’ll be emerging from warp in 3 minutes.” Federation citizen, indeed. Amy was Smith’s sister. Well, half-sister; Smith certainly wasn’t half-Klingon. Their mother was Captain Eppinger of the USS Powhatan. There was only one Klingon I knew of in Starfleet, and he’d accepted banishment from Kronos in order to marry his love and take a position as a Starfleet officer. And unless Klingons had secretly developed telepathy, that meant Eppinger was at least part Betazed. Which meant Smith was– my console chimed. “Dropping out of warp in three… two… one. Currently at half impulse, closing on the salvage target.”

“You know, you never did mention why this object is of such great value to you,” Ryan said. I felt another wave of emotion pulse around the bridge, best described as disinterest. Fascinating.

“It’s more sentimental value than anything,” she said, “but I’ve been trying to track it down for some time, and so I’m quite eager to finally have it in my hands.” Another pulse of emotion. Flirting. “You and your crew will be reward quite handsomely—”

“We’ve read the contract,” Smith said in a flat voice. “Thank you.”

I decided to try letting off some emotion of my own. I’ll be so glad when you’re all dead and floating in the cold vacuum of space. Shandra’s head snapped toward me, and I heard Amy gasp slightly. I stopped. Interesting. “Approaching target. Slowing to one-tenth impulse. Opening salvage bay. Engaging attitude thrusters in stationkeeping mode. Full stop in three… two… one. Full stop.”

“Okay, kids,” Smith said. “Buzz and I have this one. Amy, you’ll stay here with Don.”

“Sounds fun to me,” she said. I turned, and she had a coy grin on her face. Emotional pulse: Coquettishness.

“I usually watch movies while I wait,” I said flatly. She frowned, and I turned back to my console, pulling up Edge of Tomorrow. “Engaging broad-comms. Unfortunately, I have to recommend the hard suits,” I added. “There’s a lot of high-vee particles out there and you’ll need the protection.”

“This just gets better and better,” Smith said. The hard suits were bulky, harder to maneuver, and just plain uncomfortable. “Let’s go, Buzz.”

“Harry Mudd is my Jedi Master,” Ryan said to nobody in particular. That’s when my console chimed.

“Um, guys, I’m getting a ping from a Federation buoy. This system is under Federation interdiction.”

“What?” Shandra said, spinning to face our pirate guest.

“Did I not mention that?” she said. “Besides you said you faked up salvage orders. That should cover us, right?”

“Um, no,” I said, glancing at my padd. “I’ll need to make some modifications.”

“So what’s the deal with this ship,” I asked, as Smith and Ryan boosted their way to it on puffs of gas. I’d tweaked the forged salvage orders to look like they’d been issued by a Federation bureau. They wouldn’t hold up to much scrutiny, but they’d hopefully give us a head start. I also turned off the Troll’s identification beacon. Doing so wasn’t legal, but, well. Here we were.

“The ASC Auckland,” she said, “was an in-system troop transport. Solid ship design, if lacking warp capability. Rumor has it that Starfleet is looking at adapting the design for their own transports. Despite,” she added with a smirk, “your belief that Starfleet has no need for troop transports. There were four inhabited planets in this system, and each evolved life independently. A rarity,” she continued, “and the amount of interplanetary aggression that went on here suggests that four species is to many for one system.”

“You said there ‘were’ four systems,” I said.

“One was completely wiped out in one of their many wars. Ages ago,” she said, “but that’s where Auckland comes into the picture. Two of the remaining species decided to lay claim to the empty planet, and of course they found it to be a perfect opportunity to wage war on each other. Both were also on the verge of discovering warp drives, and so that’s when the Federation stepped in to try and cool things down. Auckland was actually returning home on graves duty when she was attacked by an opponent who claimed to have not gotten the cease-fire memo.”

“Graves duty?” I asked, pausing the movie and swiveling to face her. Her face was sad.

“Killing themselves and the other native races of this system wasn’t enough,” she said. “Both sides had hired plenty of out system mercenaries and troops, usually with an agreement that any remains would be returned to their homeworld or merc company. That’s what Auckland was doing, along with ferrying a short company of surviving troops.”

“So…” I said. “You’re after…”

“No,” she said scornfully. “I’m not after dead bodies. Shouldn’t you be checking in on your friends?” She crossed her arms, ending the conversation.

“I have been,” I said, turning back to my console. “They’re close to the target location.” I unmuted the bridge comms. “Captain, how’s it going?”

“Oh swell,” came the reply. “Love me a hard suit. Nothing like banging down narrow companionways like you’re a human pinball.”

“Telemetry shows you closing on the target location,” I said.

“Yeah, we’re actually right outside the door, which appears to be sealed.”

“We knew that was likely,” Smith said. “Deploying bulkhead cutter.” We were a salvage company; dealing with sealed doors was hardly unusual. My console little up as the cutter deployed, showing its power reserve, energy output, and the like. She ran it for about five minutes before shutting it down. “We’re through.”

“Um,” came Ryan’s voice, “there are a few more of these than I expected.”

“You want the one with the identification number I gave you,” Amy said. “It’ll be engraved into the short end.”

“Ah,” Ryan said. “Oh, they’re in order. Good. Um… okay! Found it!”

“Excellent,” Amy whispered. Just then, my console lit up in angry red lights.

“Captain!” I called out. “Incoming warp signature!” More lights as the incoming ship dropped out of warp. “It’s the Powhatan!” Amy cursed. “Wait… no. Same class, different ship. This is… the USS Catskill. Sorry. Still going to be a problem, though. These border patrol captains play it tight.”

“We’ve got the package,” Ryan said, “and we’re already on our way back.”

“Unidentified ship, this is Captain Eric Goines of the USS Catskill. You are violating a Federation interdiction on this system. Identify yourself and state your business.”

“Oh boy,” I muttered. “You should probably duck out of sight,” I told Amy. She was already hunching down behind the command chair. I put Captain Goines on the main screen. “Ah, hello, Catskill. This is the SS Celtic Selkie, on salvage orders from the Federation Committee for Historic Preservation.” I’d selected the most obscure department I could think of, in hopes it would delay any queries into the veracity of our orders.

“The Committee for—Selkie, why is your identification beacon not responding?”

“It’s not?” I said, adopting a confused look and poking slowly at my console. “Oh, we’ve been having trouble with the main power conduits in the automated comms systems,” I said. “I’ll get our engineer to look into it right away, sir. Sorry about that.” As soon as we hired a new engineer, of course. My console bleeped softly, indicating that the forward lock had finished cycling and that my cremates were back aboard. I keyed the cargo bay to start closing.

“Selkie, what are you doing?” Captain Goines asked.

“Well, there seems to be some confusion about our orders and this interdiction thing, so we’re shutting down operations,” I said politely.

“Ah, well, good,” Goines said. “I appreciate that. Now look, I’d like to beam your captain over so we can look at those orders and–”

That was enough. I cut the comms feed. We had a couple of tricks for situations like this, besides being able to illegally disable our identification beacon. I tapped my console just as Ryan came onto the bridge. “Plan RLASLB!” he shouted. Run Like a Scared Little Bitch.

“Already engaged,” I replied calmly. The Troll’s inertia dampers went into overdrive as there ship slewed sharply away from the Starfleet ship. Decoy packages attached to our warp nacelles exploded, making it look for a moment as if both nacelles had ruptured. Two fake escape pods ejected from the engineering hull on our dorsal side, and the Troll leapt into warp.

“Wow,” Amy said, standing back up. “Will that work?”

“It should,” Ryan said, settling into his command chair. “We’ll bounce around at different warp speeds and courses for an hour or so, and then make our way back to Downbelow and drop you off. Unless that ship got some really good scans of us, it’ll be hard to pin anything on us. Don, which name did you use?”

“Selkie,” I said.

“Ah, hell, I really liked that one. Okay, well, cross it off the list.”

“Already done. And can I see what all this fuss as about?”

“Ah, yes,” Smith said, coming onto the bridge. “This little darling.”

The “little darling” was literally a black box. It was glossy, and aside from some engraved numbers in one end, absolutely featureless. “What is it?” I asked.

“One of the reason the Federation interdicted this system and restricts the use of warp drives within it,” Amy said. “They didn’t want these little puppies getting out.”

“It’s basically an artificial intelligence,” Smith said. “One of the races in this system copies the brainwave patterns of military experts, and embeds them into these devices. Paired with the right equipment, this thing can fight an entire war all on its own. If it were properly connected to a Starfleet ship, you’d have one of the most dangerous weapons in existence.”

“Aaaaand we’re giving this to the pirate lady,” I said slowly.

“She’s not going to use it that way,” Smith said confidently, handing the box to Amy.

“A close friend of mine was hired to create battle plans for those assholes,” Amy said softly. “But rather than pay her as agreed, they took the plans and then shoved her into one of their mind-scanners. They wanted a genius military slave.”

“Did she ever escape afterwards?” I asked.

“That’s the thing,” Amy said, looking at me. Emotional pulse: Anger. “Their mind scanning process is fatal.”

I blinked. “So… what are you going to do with that?”

“Her mind is still in there,” Smith said. “And it’s active. Connected to an interface, she’ll be able to communicate. She can probably be fitted into a body of some kind, and be able to actually live again. Or something like it.”

“You sure you want me to take this?” Amy asked softly. “You two were always closer.”

Smith shook her head. “No, there are way too many complications with that for us to carry it. You take her. Get her out of Federation space, if possible, or at least to a border colony. Just keep away from the Klingon borders,” she added. “The–”

“The Powhatan,” Amy said, smiling. “I know.” The Powhatan routinely deployed to the Klingon border, where Amy’s Mom was more likely to be, and apparently more likely to find her.

“We should be back at Downbelow in a few hours,” I said. RLASLB would bounce us around deep space in that time, randomly varying course and speed to throw off pursuit. Tracking ships in warp was difficult under the best of circumstances, and I suspected Catskill wouldn’t expend much effort trying to find us. “There’s a kitchen in the crew hull, if you want to sit for a bit.”

“I think I will,” Amy said. “But before I do…” she tapped the wrist-comp she wore on one arm. “As agreed,” she said, nodding to Ryan.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“She just unlocked the cargo container in the salvage bay,” Ryan said. “We took that in lieu of pay.”

“Instead of… money?” I asked.

“It’s an emplaced military-grade megaphaser,” Ryan said, grinning. “I’ll expect you to find someplace to mount it.” My jaw dropped.

“We’ll have to beef up the power conduits, I expect,” Smith mused. “And maybe add an auxiliary dilithium chamber.”

“Already figured that out, and there’s one in the box,” Ryan said. “I think we’ll all sleep a little easier at night with that sucker mounted someplace.”

As the Troll’s automated avoidance routine continued to run, I shut down the movie player and pulled up the ship’s schematics. Where to mount a megaphaser?

“I’m going to go down and talk to Amy for a bit before we get to Downbelow,” Ryan said, standing. “And Shandra?”

“Yeah?”

“After we drop her off, you and I should probably have a little chat about family.”