Art:Space Pirates/Afya's Story
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Afya's Story
Here There be Monsters
by Whedonella
You spend as much time in space as I have, you see some things. It’s been less than forty-eight hours since Apathy left Calliope Space Station, with the tip of a lifetime. Half the crew I picked up there are gone to their makers, my ship is dead in the water (so to speak) and I can’t see jack-diddly.
Worst thing is, I think I found exactly what I been looking for.
If I was the type to lay blame, I expect I’d have it in for that grog-slinger Iolana. She sold me the coordinates, back on Calliope. Now, it’s possible she don’t know exactly what’s out here, but it’s equally possible that she does. She’s like that. Don’t care for no one and no thing except her cut, and I paid up front, so what happens to me ain’t gonna turn a hair on her head - or anywhere else for that matter. I once asked her if her species even had a heart. She just looked at me funny. I can respect all that, but if I make it out o’ this one with my skin intact, she and I are gonna have to have a serious drink together.
But this ain’t the time to be thinking about that. I got more pressing concerns, and one of them just ran past my hatch. Excuse me.
Apathy is a merchant-class vessel, with a few extra kicks. I’d tell you about them, but then I’d have to find you and kill you and we’d probably both find that a bit inconvenient. What’s important is that I have flown her through war zones so hot you’d think they were super novas. I have skipped her like a rock through mined asteroid fields. If there is a hell is the cold heart of space (and if you have ever been in space you know that there is) I have taken her there and back.
Five hours ago we hit the outer edge of an obscuration nebula. That is, a cloud of gas in space that blocks light from getting to whatever is behind it. Seemed like a good place for one, frankly, seeing as how I had me a map that said this is where I’d find the ultimate weapon of the Krii. X marks the spot, and all that.
You never heard of the Krii? That ain’t so surprising, seeing how they destroyed themselves in brutal civil wars round about the time our people thought rubbing two sticks together was the be all and end all. I found the Krii equivalent of a cap gun once. Bought me a shiny new ship, and put down the Maat moon rebellion of 2202. I was gonna sell it to the rebels originally, but the bilge rat that owned the moon made a better offer. I named my ship Apathy and slept just fine that night, thank you for asking.
Among the ancient alien races, the Krii were the most vicious, efficient enemies you could ever hope not to have. I would burn fuel halfway across a galaxy for a whisper of a Krii weapon, so you understand that I didn’t blink at the nebula. I hauled in the solar sail, and pointed Apathy straight on in.
Sheets of white hot power ripped away from my ship. She pitched and tossed like a cork for what seemed like forever but was probably all of ten seconds, and then stopped. No drift. No gravities pulling at her. Nothing. I have been inside nebulae before. Who hasn’t? Even before we went in I didn’t think this one was naturally occurring, I mean, it was just too damned convenient. But in my eagerness to find my buried treasure, it did not occur to me that this cloud was the weapon.
Main power was gone, not just out. I can check my fuel cells while on back up, and I tell you they’re empty. I can also check the crew’s life signs. My new engineer and my first mate had been in the engine room when the storm struck. Apparently that hadn’t been such a good place to be.
Or maybe it was. At least they died fast. They weren’t alone either. Anyone who didn’t have a vacuu-seal between them and the nearest fuel cell is now decomposing on my nice, clean ship. As for the rest of ‘em, your guess is as good as mine. The helm and fo’c’sle are cut off from all of the other survivors.
Which is why I was deeply unhappy when I first heard the footsteps. I checked the equipment I had online and it was all telling me that everyone, living and dead, was accounted for and not in my section of the ship. Death in space I can deal with. You do what I do, it comes with the territory. I had a momentary panic that I was going to go bug-crap crazy in space. Which if I really believed, would cause me to go to my quarters, haul out my antique American Empire Glock pistol and redecorate.
I am not crazy, and I am not alone. I am mired, in an unnatural fog, and something that shouldn’t be is on this ship. In the hours since entering the nebula I’ve heard it, and even caught a glimpse or two. It doesn’t raise a blip on my equipment, which either means the blast threw it out of whack or well, there’s some other explanation. I am not going crazy.
Crying. It sounds like a crying child, from the helm. Almost makes me laugh. Might as well be chanting “Come here, it’s a trap.” Course, maybe I shouldn’t be so smart-mouthed, seeing as if it is a trap, I’m walking right into it. Not helplessly, not heedlessly, but still coming up behind my chair, weapons ready, and . . . go!
I discharged a single stun web, kicked the chair around and sunk a dagger deep into the upholstery of my Captain’s chair. My arm, however, was inside a translucent human girl. It felt really, really cold.
There are times when you have got to keep your cool and don’t let nobody see that you are flipping out on the inside, and there are times when you have to get your hand out of some creepy ghost child as soon as humanly possible. This was one of the latter. I took a moment afterward to regain my control, and took a good look.
“I know you.” I said “You were on Calliope. Only you looked more solid in the light there.” Maybe this wasn’t my fault after all. I found myself getting mad. “Who sent you and what the hell have you done to my ship?”
Ghosts shouldn’t gasp. I mean, what do they need with air? But I guess the habits of the flesh are hard to shake, cause she gasped. “Me?”
“Don’t think I can’t hurt you ghost girl. I got salt, red string . . .”
“I didn’t do it. It was the light. Like the chest.” And cue blubbering.
I almost tossed the salt pack I keep in my left sleeve and started exorcizing her scrawny butt right then and there, but I haven’t survived in space for this long because I’m an idiot. “The chest? ”
I’ll spare you the next hour of prying poor little dead Lucy’s (that was her name) story out of her. I wish I could have been spared it, but things don’t work that way for me. Her parents were pirates, they brought home a chest with, from what she describes, Krii markings on it. They opened it and the whole family (maybe the whole space station, Lucy’s memory ain’t exactly failsafe) got slammed by an energy blast.
“It wasn’t the same.” I told her.
“Yes it was. I saw.”
“This thing, whatever it is, didn’t blast us. It converted all the fuel we were carrying into energy and sucked us dry. These back up systems, they’re just running on energy that had already been converted. When it’s gone, we suffocate, we freeze . . . Oh, what am I talking about, I’ll suffocate, I’m gonna freeze. You can dance a little jig over my body, ain’t nothing gonna happen to you.”
“I’ll be marooned.”
She had a point.
“You still haven’t said what you’re doing on my ship.”
“I though . . . I mean, I though since you were hiring . . .”
“Seriously?” I blinked. That was the face of one serious ghost child. “Lucy, what do you think you can do?”
She rocked back and forth in my chair, hurt. The chair rocked. It occurred to me that maybe I didn’t know as much as I could about ghosts. “Lucy, can you move things?”
The conversation was interrupted by a powerful flash of light from the port side. In the seconds of illumination I saw a figure in space gear drift out into the cloud. We rocked and swayed. Then it was dark, the ship was still and whoever it was, was gone. Someone tried to be a hero.
Damn. Light.
“Lucy, can you, you know, do ghost stuff? Walk through walls?”
She nodded. Damn, a plan was coming together. Light. Movement.
“Okay. You want to be a member of this crew, I got your first assignment. I need you to go into the next section of the ship and manually release the solar sail.”
“But it’s dark . . .”
“And then you’re gonna make it light.” She looked at me with horror. “The brig. There’s nobody down there. This cloud, whatever it is, it sucks up hydrogen. In the fuel cells, even in the ship’s air. It won’t be a big blast, but it will be light for the solar sail. We should move. Right now moving would be good.”
It took another half hour to explain how to do it, and convince her that she could do it. Explain to me again why anyone has kids? Finally she took off and I started my part of the plan. Forty-eight missile silos.
I waited. It was the most agonizing hour I have spent since sitting for my Captain’s exam. Finally: light. Boom. We moved.
Not a lot, but the sail caught it. We moved. I adjusted the sail, and opened the missile silos. We moved again.
Hot damn. The silos closed. Forty-eight perfectly sealed silos closed around cloud matter.
Lucy came drifting back in. “I’m sorry Captain. I’m so sorry . . .”
“Don’t be. You saved us.”
“But, how?”
“I have control of the sail, we just need a big enough blast of light. Don’t worry about it, Lucy. Now I want you to go around the ship and tell everyone who made it that we’re on our way out of here. They shouldn’t panic, and they shouldn’t try anything stupid.”
She didn’t get it. I could see that. But she did what she was told. Good girl. Maybe I’d even keep her.
As for me, I was on cloud nine, if you’ll forgive the expression. Forty-eight silos of the stuff, and all I needed to get out of here was one nice big blast of light.
I set the distress beacon, and sat back to wait.
