Art:Space Pirates/Mulligan's Story

= Mulligan's Story = by Sal

The first thing I saw when I came to was the cell door, which is always a bad sign. I tried closing my eyes and replaying as much as I could remember of the day: morning, arrival at Calliope Station. Noon, lunch at the promenade food court. Afternoon, a bit of innocent computer reprogramming in a maintenance corridor near the station vault... and then nothing. Definitely a bad sign. "Hmm... it's finally conscious." I opened my eyes, and looked around the holding cell. The speaker, a tall, dusky woman, leaned against the far wall with her arms crossed and looked at me like you might look at an unexpected spot of corrosion on your engine console. "Mulligan Riley," I replied, forcing a grin despite what I was starting to recognize as the neck ache of a stunner wearing off. "And I'm a he, lass." "Funny," a man's voice said, "I wouldn't have pegged you for Irish." I turned to see a young man with dark red curls, cross-legged on a bunk. Next to him, a quavering pile of pink chiffon that I abruptly realized was a young woman seemed to be trying to disappear entirely into the corner of the room farthest from me. I sighed. "Leprechaun, don't you know. The green skin and pointed ears are a union requirement." The first lass spoke again. "Right. Whatever you are. What brings you to our little party here?" I was surprised to be able to answer honestly. "I'm not certain; my memory is still a bit hazy." She smiled; I didn't find that comforting. "Funny. Same with me." The lad on the bunk nodded, "me too. No idea." "I think I can help with your question, Afya." A gent with a clipboard and an ITF ID clipped to his belt stepped into the hall outside the cell. "The green fellow is Mr. Mulligan McInvernesshireling, and he's here because he wasn't quite successful in keeping himself hidden when he decided to play with someone else's alarm system. Isn't that so, Mr. McInvernesshireling?" Afya raised an eyebrow. "So, 'Riley'?" I shrugged. "Gaelic can be hard to pronounce. I don't blame ..." I paused to read his badge. "... Mr. Pachenga; it's a very common mistake." The ITF agent laughed. "Indeed. I think there are far too many things we don't quite know about you." His face, now, was right outside the bars. "For example, less than a week ago, we confiscate a mysteriously sealed package off of a suspected pirate named Delphinius, right before he escapes toward the rim frontier. And now here you are, fresh from the rim frontier, poking around the vault where that's stored. Coincidence?" I tried to look respectable. "Of course, officer! I'm quite sure this is all a big mistake." Across the hall, a slender man with short, blond hair stepped up to the door of another cell. "Oh, really?" His eyes seemed to drill into me. "Is that so? Pirate?" Pachenga glanced at him, then at me, then smiled and walked away. "Well, perhaps we'll continue this conversation later." The pink chiffon moved, transforming with astonishing speed from lunge to well-practiced flounce. "Oh, officer! Speaking of mistakes, I'm sure I'm not supposed to be here!" Pachenga sighed. "Well, Esmerelda, if you hadn't mouthed off at the customs inspector about how you were too important to fill out paperwork, you might not be. For now, you'll have to wait until your hearing." "That's Ms. Dringlebutom to you! And you'll hear about this from my father!" she yelled as he left. The red haired lad looked warily across the hall. "The hardcase with his own cell's called Amar; he's some sort of bounty hunter. He's in here for slashing the throat of a drunk who'd been bragging about running with a pirate crew." "Not a good man to think you're a pirate," Afya added. "Indeed. Always a bad sign," I mused. An hour or so later, Esmerelda had gone from fright to righteous anger and had stationed herself at the hallway door, and I'd spread out on a bunk to think. I still wasn't sure how much I'd finished before getting caught, and I certainly wasn't going to accomplish anything stuck in here. Afya wandered over. "What's that you're humming?" she asked. "The Rising of the Moon," I shrugged. "Traditional Irish folksong." I thought for a moment, then began singing softly, "My first day here on Calliope, already in a cell, with a maniac next door who'd like to send me off to hell..." The lad laughed. "Those are the traditional lyrics?" "It's a hobby," I shrugged. "I wouldn't mind writing one of my own for real some day." We were interrupted by the hollow thump of an explosion nearby, followed immediately by the ringing of shrapnel hitting the station's metal walls. A sinking feeling hit me; this was not the place to be, right now. "What was that?" Esmerelda chirped. "Well, if I'd had to guess," I replied, "I'd say we're nearer to the vault then I thought, and they have not been keeping Del's package at ten degrees or lower for the past week." Predictably, I now had everyone's attention. "And what, exactly, does that mean?" Afya asked with a very dangerously quiet voice. "That depends, on what else is near the vault. Nothing major, if it's just cargo bays," I replied, trying to look calm. "And what," the red haired lad asked, "if it just happens to be right above the station reactor?" "That ... would be more major," I replied. An evacuation alarm went off. "See, that's a bad sign, that is." We dove for the door, but it wasn't budging. Across the hall, Amar just sat still, waiting. After about ten long minutes of alarm, Pachenga came running in. "We have to go. Now. Almost all of the ships have launched." He opened Amar's cell, then turned toward ours. With a fluid motion, the bounty hunter looped an arm around Pachenga's neck, tightened, and dropped the ITF agent's body to the floor. "Let us out! You have to let us out!" Esmerelda was screaming now. Amar stared directly at me for a moment, and then laughed. "No." And with that, he was gone. Esmerelda dissolved. The red headed lad hobbled to the door; for the first time, I noticed that one of his feet was twisted, but he still moved with surprising speed. He crouched down at the door, and reached through toward Pachenga's body. Closing his eyes in concentration, he twisted slowly, pressing his shoulder through the bars until the tips of his fingers just reached the key card. A moment later, he was standing again and opening the door and we were out. Afya immediately activated a communications terminal. "Open channel to the Apathy, slip nine" she barked at the computer. "No matching ship in port," the computer replied. "Slip nine has been open for three minutes, seventeen seconds." Afya stared at the terminal as if it had just bitten her. Esmerelda laid a hand on her arm. "I still have Daddy's Ride; I should be able to squeeze us all on board." Afya paused, dumbstruck, then seized Esmerelda's hand in hers. The red haired lad rested his fist on top of their grasp. I added my hand and nodded once. Then we ran. We burst into the slip where Esmerelda's sloop was docked. I wouldn't have expected that "Daddy's Ride" actually was the name of the ship, but there it was, stenciled on the side. We crowded aboard, and Esmerelda began the launch sequence. Suddenly, there was a massive grinding sound, and we looked out the viewport to see the blast shield on the slip closing. "Warning," the computer blared, "station destruction imminent. Do not approach. Sealing station against new landings now." I started to speak. "That's..." "...a bad sign," everyone else finished for me in unison. "Shoot the blast shield," Afya ordered. "I can't," Esmerelda replied, "I don't have strong enough cannons." "The good news," I sighed, already headed for the dock, "is I know which system I need to override to open the blast shield. The bad news is that it's back in the station control room." I jogged quickly to the control room, and was happy to find that Pachenga's key card got me through the door without having to stop to pick it. I tore open the slip control cabinet, and began searching for the right circuit. Behind me, the computer began a countdown to destruction at twenty seconds. I pulled the circuit block, and looked up to the security monitors to see the slip blast shields opening. The computer called out fifteen seconds. I knew there was no way I could ask them to wait. "Go," I called over the communications terminal, "go now!" On the monitor I could see Daddy's Ride pulling clear of the station. The count was down to three seconds when its jump drive warped it clear. Three seconds later, the alarms abruptly cut off, leaving my ears ringing in the silence for a moment. A grim chuckle behind me spoiled the moment. I turned. "Amar, I believe?" Sure enough, he was standing in the doorway, with what may have been the largest laser pistol I'd ever seen pointed at my head. "Odd thing," he sneered. "I ran into one of the techs from the reactor core, and his alarm had said it was one of the docked ships that was about to blow. But everyone else seemed to think it was the station reactor. And then I started thinking: weren't you busted messing with the alarms? Maybe you weren't just turning them off like a simple thief." I shrugged, keeping a careful eye on the pistol. "You don't stop to compare notes on an evacuation alarm. You evacuate, and then ask questions later. At least, that's how it's supposed to work." He nodded. "And here's how I think the rest of it works. Your buddies are just out of sensor range, waiting for everyone to leave so they can sweep in and pillage before everyone figures out what happened. The thing is, they aren't going to be expecting the station defenses to tear into them at point blank range... are they?" Unfortunately, he was correct. And I also didn't have a good plan for "homicidal bounty hunter who doesn't have the sense to evacuate" so it was looking pretty grim. "Now, let's not be hasty," I tried desperately to improvise, "you've got this all wrong." I tried to reach the ship-to-shore console without him noticing, but failed. "Nice try," he barked, the barrel of the pistol tracking to my hand, "but I don't think..." With a startling crack, a laser burst from the hallway blew through his head and he slumped to the ground, firing his laser over the ship-to-shore and into a hapless monitor screen as he fell. I immediately keyed the coded transmission in, as Afya stepped over his body and into the control room. "We're on approach," came Gorgeia's voice from the pirate cutter Oliver's Folly. "Another brilliant plan goes perfectly. Like I said all along: 'what could go wrong?'" I stared at Afya instead of answering. She smiled dangerously and wandered over to the station defense console. "Amar is bright, but the man had a one track mind. I, on the other hand, expect that you and your friends are capable of appreciating a good... business deal?" I grinned mischievously, humming. "I do need to finish my verse from earlier. What rhymes with 'extortionist'?" I eyed her legs. "Hmm, 'contortionist' perhaps?" That was when she slugged me, hard. But she was smiling when she did it. And I have to think that was a good sign.

= Cast of Characters =

Mulligan McInvernesshireling

Afya

Ruanos

Esmerelda Dringlebutom

Edny Pachenga

Delphinus Leo Tetrarchies-Smith

Amar Svensson

Gorgeia