Pirate's Bane; Black Star
Chapter 13; Bullet Wounds

Doctor Peacock sat on my console in the cockpit, his boney ass was pressing against my H.N.I., for that alone I would have killed him but I was on the other side of the door looking at the cockpit through a security interface rigged into Lerra’s arm, the screen was tiny but the picture was good and the sound came through well enough though it did crackle a bit, she really wasn’t lying when she said she was bad with sound stuff. “Is it done?” He asked his subordinate, the soldier we had rescued that could still walk.

He closed the ship to ship communication and put down the head set, sadly we had only tapped into the security feed in time to hear Doctor Peacock’s question not what the man was doing but it couldn’t be good. “Yes sir,” he said with the rigid style of a career military man, “the main fleet is on its way.”

“Good man Lucas,” he said dismissing the man with a wave of his gun, “now go and check on Carlos, he’s in pretty bad shape.”

“Aye sir.” Lucas said rising and heading toward the door and us on the other side.

James pushed himself off the wall with his arms crossed as the door slid closed and Lucas made his way toward Lerra and me hidden just behind the corner wall of the common area. Lerra had muted the noise when the door opened and we waited. It took him three steps to get within range and then it took Lerra only a fraction of a second to grab his chin and the top of his head and snap his neck around until he was staring at us with dead eyes and his head pointing the wrong way. She pulled the body back with us and then brought the sound back to the video impute from her security tap. “What I want to know is what the hell is going on?” James snapped.

“What’s going on, I thought I told you.” Doctor Peacock said dismissively.

“Cut the crap, I want to know everything.” James snapped.

“What’s going on is a simple business arrangement.” Doctor Peacock explained as if James was dense in the head.

“You know what the hell I’m talking about! I want to know what the hell you’re going to do to my crew?”

“Your crew?” He almost laughed, though his face took on such a dark look of mirth I actually wanted to run away, he was a man who killed for the hell of it and enjoyed every moment of it. In the back of my mind I actually remember wondering if he enjoyed watching children die from Varik Syndrome or cutting into their bodies afterwards. “You betrayed them all. Without the protection of my pirates I’m fairly certain that they’d kill you…”

“Damn right.” I whispered, trying to keep up my tough act but I really just wanted to pee myself and run away, luckily Lerra didn’t notice when she glared at me. “What?”

“So can you really let them go free, even if you put them on my men’s damaged shuttle they’d have a chance of surviving and wanting revenge on you later. They might even get it if that girl Alexis is anything to go by.” That I have to admit caught me off guard, James had sold us out to a mad man but he had not told the mad man who I was, he still thought I was my alias not who I really was. “Besides once we ransom the vaccine to the colony you will get your one percent of the ten billion, remember billion, credits, that is a hundred million credits in case you forgot how to do math. That’s more than enough for you to pay off your debts and go into hiding somewhere nice and warm, you can even change your name and your looks if you are so inclined, Hell start a haram of naked slave girls for all I care, it will be your money to do with as you please.”

“And my ship, what happens to it, do you junk her somewhere or does she get folded into your fleet?”

“It will remain yours of course, after we deal with your crew.”

“Why use damn clichés, you’re going to kill them why not just come out and say so.”

“Would you prefer it if I told you just how and where I was going to shot them? I could give you medically accurate explanations of just how they will die if you want.”

“Why not just give them the damn shuttle at least then they would have a fair chance of surviving.”

“And let them live to possibly take their revenge on us at a later date,” he tapped the gun’s barrel to her chine in thought, “I think not.” Without any physical warning he pointed the gun at James and put the bullet right through his stomach, eviscerating him. The shot wasn’t instantly fatal, James had time to try and stop the bleeding before too much blood leaked out from between his finger and pooled on the floor in front of him. His eyes looked pleading and angry at the same time and I actually felt sorry for him even though he had sold me out, he had been killed because he wanted to give us a chance to live, instead he was killed himself. Doctor Peacock looked down at James’s body and sighed with a soft shake of his head. “That was such a waste, I could have used him if he had some more back bone. He was a good pilot after all.” He leaned over his legs and activated the ships intercom. “Lucas I need you back here to pilot this heap, I’m sure Carlos will keep for now.”

“Aye sir.” Lerra’s arm said from a play back of the recording as she picked up his body.

She pushed and hauled the body to the bridge door and stood him up as if he had been walking toward bridge and hid behind his waist, it took me all of two second to figure out her plan and less time to dislike it. She opened to door, as soon as it was open she dropped the body to the floor and rushed into the cockpit only Doctor Peacock saw it coming and pointed his gun at her head, stopping her. “Interesting.” He said smugly.

“Look,” I said flatly, letting my shotgun hang from my hand, “we just want the shuttle and for you to leave us alone, we won’t bother you if you don’t bother us, alright?”

“And we want Arthur.” Lerra snapped.

“You don’t want to stop me?” He asked me almost confused.

“I would love to,” I admitted, “I would love to put your head on a stick and watch the birds peek at it as it rots but that isn’t the smartest thing to do since your men are coming, the entire fleet of the Red Cancer Pirate armada I’m guessing.”

“Very good, but I wouldn’t call us an armada,” he said in a cordial tone, “we only have ten ships but they are all fairly well armed and manned.”

“Ten ships that took down a Sol Alliance Destroyer last year without losing a single ship in the encounter, I saw the file, they had surrendered and you still blew the ship out of the void and killed a few hundred good men and women.”

“Ah the price of fame,” he said with an off handed wave, “my reputation always precedes me?”

“That and the fact that you are thought to be immortal since the leader of the Red Cancers has been killed or committed suicide five times since its formation only ten years ago.”

“It’s strange to replace someone who wants their own life more than the bounty on my head. It is quite sizable.”

“We have other plans that don’t include being hunted by pirates until we’re too old to run anymore, and I’m already plenty old as it is.”

“There is another option,” he offered casually, “you could always join my crew, I could always use two strong women like you.”

“You want us to become members of the Red Cancers?” I asked shocked.

“Why not? From what James told me you are a war criminal who’s own family despises you,” he said looking at me and then turned to look at Lerra, James had told him who I was, “and you’re a mechanic who has kept this tub running for much longer than it was ever designed for. I could offer you both more money than a year full of Black Hole Runs like this.”

“Not interested.” I said flatly.

“Same here.” Lerra said in the same flat tone as me.

“I’m so sorry to hear that.” He said as he took aim at us with his gun with the same inhuman speed he had used before on James. Arthur ran up through the open door we had left open and pulled the both of us to the floor so violently that we actually bounced when we hit the floor outside of the cockpit. Doctor Peacock was already aiming at us so it was easy to change his aim to Arthur and put a bullet through his chest.

Arthur’s legs folded underneath him as he fell as sparks flew from the hole in his chest that I could put my whole arm through.

Lerra reached out with her arm toward the cockpit and yelled. “Arthur.”

“Run ma’am,” he said weakly and then yelled, “Run!” Doctor Peacock took his time and aimed his gun at Arthur’s head and shot his neck, ripping his head clean off his body. With no central processor left to control his body he dropped the dead man tiger device in his hand to the floor. As soon as the switch fell from his hand a warning siren began to wale and whine.

“What is going on?” Doctor Peacock yells pressing his hands to his ears.

“The tesseract core,” Lerra whispered, “he set it to meltdown.” I didn’t need her to explain what would happen in less than a few minutes, a tesseract core meltdown would ripe the ship into a great majority of its component atoms and as you know very few pieces that resemble anything more than the shaving off of nuts and bolts.

I got up from the floor and grabbed Lerra’s shoulder to pull her along with me. “We need to go.” I commanded. Doctor Peacock took no time in aiming his gun at my head as I pulled Lerra back down the hall and around my back so I could get a clean shot off at him, the first round got him in the leg. He began to fall but caught himself on the console before raising his gun and putting a bullet through my hand as I tried to fire again and that sent my bullet into Lerra’s gut, thanks for the patch job on my hand by the way. I didn’t notice that I had shot her at first and took aim at him one last time and put a slug into the bastards head, if you want you can convict me of that or give me the reward either way I don’t care. I began to drag Lerra again and felt her not moving and yelled thinking she was in some kind of shock. “Lerra!” I yelled. “Come on we need to get out the hell out of here!” Then I looked at her and couldn’t keep a grip on myself, I had shot Lerra. “Lerra?, Oh my gods?”

Without thinking I hefted her onto my shoulder and ran for the shuttle. I got her inside and hooked her to the medical instruments while the shuttle prepped to leave but I had left my H.N.I. and I was going back for it so I just put in cordites away from the ship and burned the hell out of there before the ship went to pieces, but I wasn’t fast enough. I got about ten meters out and the damn thing blew to all the holy hells.

Alex downs the last of the water in her cup and puts it back on the table as if it were made of fine crystal not industrial metal like most everything in the room. She looks even more tired now than she had when she had been escorted to the room only a few hours back. “You know what happened after that.”

“Yes I do.” Coreance says somberly. “After you made it to the shuttle to got away to a point, but when the core overloaded and your shuttle was damaged in the resulting explosion, several tiny hull breaches were formed by the shrapnel and the shuttle’s engines were damaged, you were sent drifting toward the edge of Alliance space and from there we found you and brought you on board thanks to the distress signal the shuttle was sending out. I want to believe you but do you have any proof of what Dr. Peacock said or did?”

“Lerra’s arm,” she says flatly with little to no expression, “she recorded a copy of their conversation, she recorded a copy of everything once we were taken, it should all still be in the backup memory core in her arm?”

“I will have to return you to your cell to check that?” He says sadly.

“I know,” Alex says just as flatly as she rose, “call your guards and I’ll go quietly.”

“I’ll take you myself, without the restraints, once we visit Lerra.”