Foxhole Six-Sixty-Two « Lucas X. Wiseman Short Story

Foxhole Six-Sixty-Two had been dug for two people, but there were nine of us pressed inside. 

I was near the middle, desperately crawling to get away from the howling shells that fell like God’s own wrath, hunting for our souls. I was crushed between both the Scouts closer to the entrance who pressed away from the falling death with all their might, and shoved by those slightly more concealed who were fearful of being smothered by the mass of bodies. 

It was hard to breathe. 

But the sergeant was not afraid. 

A brutal woman, forged out of sharp words and blunt steel, she sat at the very front of the foxhole, watching. She gazed out at the searing plasma explosions, a falling clockwork rhythm made by the enemy laserfire. She seemed bored, giving the death-shells as much regard as a cat on a windowsill might watch the trees in the wind. 

The persistent bombing was steady enough to dance to, but she waited calmly. The reinforcements were coming, she’d told us before our retreat. We needed only to endure. 

“Coward,” someone whispered. “I’m a bleeding coward.”

It came from behind me, and as the Sarge turned, I felt the flush of shame and terror as she looked at me. I meant to shake my head, to gesture that it was not I who spoke, but the words froze in my throat when I saw her face. The left side was bloody and ruined. She would need a new eye, at the least. But instead of disgust or ire, she looked upon me with… kindness.

“No, that ain’t it,” she said. “You Scouts, all so young. Ya’ll shoulda been taught this: you can’t be a brave person. You can’t be that, any more than I could become a–”

Her words were stolen by an explosion mere meters from her. The assault became a withering rain; the waltz of bombardment transforming into a rollicking samba. And yet, she was still. The sergeant, calm and implacable, only flinched when the explosions tossed the dust of disintegrated corpses into her face.

 I closed my eyes, felt the thin earthen walls trembling above my helmet. As death fell onto us, we cursed and moaned and wept, all of us begging for the noise and the heat and the falling death to cease. Time became meaningless, there was only the raging bombardment, the crush of the soldiers ahead of me, the shoving hands of the ones behind. All of us squirming to get to safety, all of us wishing we had run just a little faster, so we could be further away from the falling death at the foxhole’s mouth. All of us terrified. All except her.

After an infernal amount of uncountable time, the bombardment lessened.

The sergeant continued.

“Y’see, Scouts? Life ain’t about what you are. You ain’t anything that matters out here. No woman nor man can make themselves into another thing just by willing it. You can’t make your mind stop screaming at you that you should run. You can’t stop it thinking of your lover, or your soft bed, or the last thing you said to your mother. You can’t control fear, or joy, or lust. None of it.”

“Then how?” I asked, my voice rising above the moans of we would-be shades, gathered and half buried already, simply awaiting delivery to the damned afterworld. “How can you stand it?” 

“I don’t,” she said, almost too softly to hear. The strain on me lessened as the Scouts at the edges stopped pushing back into the narrow safety of the foxhole and leaned toward her. I joined them, trying to listen.

“All you believe, all your definitions about yourself… they go away, here. No ‘you oughta’ and no ‘you should be,’ on the battlefield… In this hole. You do a brave thing. You do a courageous thing. You do a bastard of a hard thing. And that’s all there is.”

She turned her one eye onto us, a savage and brutal blue orb tinged with compassion. 

“Ain’t none of you cowards. Ain’t none of you brave, neither. You’re just folk, and when the time comes you don’t have to be brave. You don’t have to be strong. You just have to do a brave thing, or a strong thing, or a wise thing if you’re lucky.”

The shelling was ongoing, still waltzing through the screaming air, but we were quiet, now. We could hear her clearly.

“Simple as,” she said, nodding. “You can be scared, now. You can piss your britches and cry for momma, if that’ll make you feel better. But when the time comes to go up and over and take the fight to the bastards throwing death our way, you don’t gotta be anything. You just have to do.”

She looked up. The rain of the enemy’s ire had slackened into a trickle, a barely noticeable pop-thud-pop of shell and thrown earth.

“Now ain't’ the time for wonderin’ who you are, what you are. Now’s the time for doing. Do a brave thing, Scouts. With me.”

She stood, and we stood with her. She gave us a granite-faced grin, her weapon clutched in her mechanical hand. She led us out and up and over, onto the battlefield anew.

We nine, leaving a foxhole meant for two, charged.

The Wench– Ch. 10: Underground

“We’re too late,” Hals whispered.

“Yes,” Li-Cha said. 

Hals turned to her friend, and saw the terror in her eyes. She was staring at the slowly falling drop bunkers as they hit the atmosphere around the station and started to glow cherry red. No one was shooting at them; no one was even aware of what was happening.

“We have to warn them,” Hals said. 

“How? Can you do whatever Redblink did, to take over every system on the station?” Li-Cha asked, sarcasm coloring her voice.

“You know I can’t, but maybe Asendor–”

“We have run, Hals. It’s the only way we make it out of this. We protect our own, and say a prayer for the rest. That’s all we can do.”

Hals bit her lower lip. The skimmer was bringing them in for a landing now, but the drop bunkers hit first. The entire station shuddered as the massive weight of the bunkers impacted the four crescents, cracking the metal streets and then driving in support pylons with tiny explosive charges. They rooted themselves like infectious weeds, Hals thought. A shield around the bunker crackled to life, and then Hals lost sight of them as the skimmer brought them in for a landing in front of Asendor’s shop. 

“Plan,” Li-Cha said as they got out. “I’ll grab anything we might be able to use: trade goods, synthetic body parts, limbs, whatever. You get food and survival gear, and Fifth.”

“Got it,” Hals said. The station shook again as another bunker made its landing. Someone screamed in the far distance. Hals saw distant smoke start to rise, blue and cold. A huge laser bolt shot up into the sky and scattered into the atmosphere. A missed shot, or a warning? She had no time to wonder. 

She kicked the front door of Asendor’s place open using her synthetic leg. It hurt, but the pain was an illusion: just something that her brain was being told to feel by the very intelligent bits of machinery that lived inside her fake bones. She kicked again, and by the third time, the door caved in. Alarms went off instantly, and Hals could hear the security mecha maneuvering to attack her. It might come in handy.

“Deactivate, emergency clearance Halsirena!” she shouted as the whirring machine waddled into the main sales floor. The spinning turret’s harsh whine slackened, and the robot’s eyes blinked from red to green. It then quirked its head to one side. 

“You, get out front and defend us. Anybody comes walking down the street with a weapon, fire a warning shot, then let them eat laser.” The mecha beeped to confirm her order and crab-walked through the door. Li-Cha was already filling her arms with things, barely pausing to look at them. She spotted a large bag of sharp looking tools and dumped it out, filling it instead with her loot.

“Fifth! Where are you?” Hals yelled. She ran up the stairs to the living quarters, taking them two at a time. When she got onto the landing, a blaster was aimed at her face. It was held in Fifth’s trembling hands.

“What’s happening?” she asked. “Why’d you break in? You scared m–”

“The station is being attacked. We need to run. Quick: grab a bag and fill it with anything you can, anything valuable.”

“Where’s Asendor?” Fifth asked, still aiming her weapon at Hals. She ignored the young woman and grabbed her own go bag, pulling it open and rummaging inside to reload her Gobbler with a new power cell. The weapon powered up with a happy noise and Hals pocketed it, then got her slug thrower out. The Declaration, as Asendor demanded it be called. She slipped it over her shoulder.

“Didn’t you hear me? We need to run. Get your shit,” Hals said. Fifth was trembling, and wearing her night clothes. “And get dressed!” Below them a crash echoed as Li-Cha tipped a locked display case on its side so she could get into it. Hals didn’t have time to wait any longer: she slid back down the stairs and got into the kitchen, finding a tight mesh bag and filling it with as many non-perishable food items as she could find in Asendor’s cupboards. Through the open door, she saw Adumon Station’s emergency lights kick on: flashing red-blue-whites. A siren started to wail. Better late than never.

She ran into the back room where the nice new cot was and shoved it to the side so she could get to the wall of specialty tools Asendor kept. She dragged them off the wall and into her go-bag, which was getting heavy and full. And then she saw them, like a gift from the heavens: the blasters she’d taken from the crew of the Golden Esposs. Asendor hadn’t gotten around to selling them yet. Hals gathered the weapons, tossing away one that Asendor had started to take apart. They now had three high-quality laser weapons. Hals ran onto the sales floor, which looked like a small windstorm had torn through it. Shattered glass, prosthetic bones, and advertisements for physical augmentation littered the floor. In the middle, like a conductor of chaos stood Li-Cha. She had three bags at her feet, the third of which she finished zipping up. She caught the blaster Hals threw at her.

“This is some serious firepower,” she said, admiring the longgun.

“Courtesy of the crew I took it from. It’ll help us take their ship, too,” Hals said. The wailing siren and flashing lights outside combined with the snowdrifts and the broken glass reflected the light in an almost beautiful pattern. For a moment Hals felt that she might be dreaming. And then Fifth stumbled down the stairs, her little self-defense blaster still clutched tightly in her fist.

“Take this instead,” Hals said, holding out the blaster carbine. It was the easiest for someone inexperienced to use. Or so she hoped. But Fifth didn’t grab it: she just stared.

“You said we’re going to take my old ship? The Esposs?”

“There’s barely any crew left, and we need a ship to get off this station,” Li-Cha said. “So yes. Take us to it, we’ll commandeer it, and get out of here.”

“I won’t,” Fifth said, shaking her head. Hals and Li-Cha both froze, staring at the young woman. She’d found two of Asendor’s coats in his upstairs closet and put them both on, but beneath that was nothing but her nightgown and a pair of slippers. 

“Why not?” Li-Cha asked. Her voice was calm and cold, and Hals felt a tickle of fear run down her spine. 

“Because you’ll kill them too. I don’t want Jul and Sbarra to die because of me, not like the rest of them.”

Li-Cha stood frozen for a moment, just staring at Fifth. Then, she punched her in the mouth. 

It happened so fast, neither she nor Hals were ready for it. Hals could only watch as the younger girl crashed back into one a display shelf full of different eyeballs and knocked it over. Mechanical orbs rolled across the floor, staring up blindly. To her credit, Fifth came to her senses pretty quickly, aiming her little blaster at Li-Cha and squeezing off a shot. The blast hit Li-Cha square in the chest and dissipated instantly, thanks to her shield. She didn’t even flinch.

“Shoot me again, little girl,” she said, leveling her much larger blaster. “See how well that works out for you.”

“Both of you, stop!” Hals said, stepping between them with her hands raised. She turned her back to Li-Cha, confident her friend wouldn’t shoot her in the back, and knelt in front of Fifth.

“Here’s what we will do. Use this, and call Jul and Sbarra,” Hals said, reaching into her back for the ship’s horn and passing it to Fifth. “Tell them we’re coming and that we all need to get off this station. We don’t want to hurt them, we just want a ride. Okay?”

“And if they don’t cooperate, we’ll fill them full of hot plasma,” Li-Cha added. “Catch all that?”

Fifth’s eyes burned with fury as she stared past Hals at Li-Cha, but she nodded. She took the ship’s horn and pressed it to her ear.

Hals hefted her go-bag and the sack of food she’d managed to grab, then reached out and pulled Fifth to her feet. She was speaking in low tones, hurried whispers to whoever had picked up on the other end. Li-Cha threw one of the bags at Fifth and hefted the other two, and laden with their supplies, they marched back into the street. 

In a few brief minutes, it had been transfigured into a scene of chaos. People were everywhere now, running and yelling to one another, streaming away from the direction where the bunkers had landed, not realizing they were just going to run into another one once they hit the crossroads. In the sky above, ships were firing on Silver’s Culling, their tiny blasters insignificant against the bulk of its shields. Occasionally one of the small pirate ships would explode as the Culling returned fire, and vaporized remnants of a ship would rain down, burning through the skies. Asendor’s mecha was still in the street, and had not had cause to shoot at anyone yet. Hals whistled for it. 

“Follow me and defend us against anyone wearing Centurium armor. If anybody shoots at us, kill them.”

The robot blinked merrily.

“Where is Asendor?” Fifth asked, putting away the ship’s horn. She started to lead them down the road. “We need to get to, uh… Azure Crescent? That’s where we docked.”

“Shit,” Hals said. “That’s the opposite side of the station. We’ll have to go through that blockade at the crossroads.”

“We can shoot our way through,” Li-Cha said, raising her blaster. “But I’d prefer not to get in a firefight. I don’t think the little girl is wearing a shield.”

Hals glanced back at Fifth. “You do have a body shield, don’t you?”

The girl actually blushed. “The crew said I didn’t need one; said they’d take care of me. Protect me.”

Hals barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. They ran on, Hals leading, Li-Cha taking up the rear and covering them. The mecha marched along, scanning, always scanning. Above them, a large cruiser powered up its black engines attempted to jump into Neverspace. Instantly it evaporated, turning into vapor and screaming hot metal as Silver’s Culling fired upon it. The name now struck her as much more ominous. 

As Hals, Li-Cha and Fifth ran towards the Azure Crescent, Hals couldn’t help but appreciate the brilliance of what Redblink had done. With his ship docked to the station like any normal pirate vessel, it was on the opposite side of the extremely powerful defensive turrets the station supported. Adumon Station could probably take on Silver’s Culling in a fair fight, given their similar sizes and comparable firepower, but the station could no more fire on Silver’s Culling than it could turn itself inside out. A masterful tactic. 

The station’s alarms crackled and shorted out, though the lights continued to flash as they ran, letting the mecha clear a path through the crowd for them. After a few seconds of static, a new voice spoke: not Redblink, but a different man. Someone with the proper accent of the Core worlds.

“Attention please: this is Commander Calig Morit. This station is now under the jurisdiction of the Royal Centurium, on behalf of Queen Magesticanna IX. All citizens of Adumon Station are encouraged to take shelter as we cleanse this place of the pirate scum that has infested it. To the pirates attempting to flee or to attack my ship: your demise brings me no pleasure. Simply surrender to us, and you will be given a fair trial. Resisting arrest will be considered an act of war, and will be met with summary execution.”

The message started to repeat itself. Hals kept one eye on the sky as they ran. No more ships were attempting to slip out. No one else had managed to make it yet, and dying in a starship explosion wasn’t how most folks wanted to go.

“What are we going to do?” Li-Cha called out. “Even if we get to the ship, how are we going to get off the station?”

“Maybe we should just turn ourselves in!” Fifth suggested. “I haven’t done anything wrong, and--”

“You flew with a pirate crew. That’s evidence enough on most planets,” Li-Cha said sharply. A large, wailing man ran into the road before them, a huge cannon in his hands. Roaring, he aimed it at the Silver’s Culling and released a huge, concentrated burst of laser fire that sheared through the station’s atmosphere and splashed harmlessly against the big ship’s shields. He held down the trigger as they passed him. Hals could see he was weeping.

“Besides, Fifth: we’re not exactly sitting pretty with the Centurium,” Hals said. “You can take your chances on your own if that’s what you want, but I still say our best bet is getting on that ship and waiting for our moment. But it’s your life.”

She looked at Fifth, and could almost see her processing the information. She could just turn herself in, or hide out and wait for it all to be over. But that would probably mean a return to the life she’d fled from. And Hals and Asendor had been kind to her; even though Li-Cha had split her lip. The young woman shook her head. “No, you’re right. Better to get on the ship.”

“Glad we agree. Now, let’s hope Halsirena comes up with a novel plan to avoid getting shot to death as we fly away,” Li-Cha said. Ahead of them, Hals heard the sounds of death. Cries of pain, the hiss-snick of lasers, and the billowing gust of evaporating snow. They were nearing where the drop bunker had landed, Hals was sure. There were no people running past them anymore, the streets were emptier than Hals had ever seen them. Even in the darkest part of the night, there was usually someone walking somewhere, or a drunk passed out on a bench, or a working girl soliciting passers-by. But now there was no one, but for the three of them and their mecha. Without speaking, they all stopped. A few hundred meters away, a crater in the ground was releasing a huge plume of black smoke, and beyond that they could see the occasional blast of laser fire. 

“We should probably try a side street. I don’t think– there’s no way we can just pass through the main corridor,” Hals said. “Is there?”

“Not with that thing with us,” Li-Cha said, pointing at the mecha. It was scanning the horizon dutifully looking for threats. “That’ll peg us as people trying to fight.”

“We could leave it?” Fifth asked.

“I have a better idea,” Hals said. She whistled again, and the mecha turned to her. “March forward and kill everybody wearing a Centurium uniform,” she told it. It booped at her, and waddled off toward the smoke and the sounds of battle.

“That thing will distract them, and that might give us a chance to get underground. Let’s go.”

Hals led them away from the main road, keeping an ear out for the sounds of the fighting to change when the mecha engaged. She kept the Declaration tight to her shoulder, watching for movement. It was considered unethical to use a slug thrower, and they were often illegal because they had no non-lethal setting like a blaster did. If Hals was spotted by any of the invading forces, she’d probably just get shot. She tapped her nose ring and it blinked a happy green. Shields at full. Hopefully it’d be enough.

“There’s an underground to the station?” Fifth asked, as Hals paused at an intersection and tried to get her bearings. There was a body lying in the gutter, her back blackened with the fire of a dozen blasters. Not exactly non-lethal, either. Fifth was staring at the body.

“Yeah, of course. This thing is one gigantic spaceship. We just live on its skin most of the time, but there’s a lot of maintenance tunnels and passageways. Normally they’re monitored by the Wazishaki triplets and their security team to watch out for sabotage, but I think they have bigger issues right now.” 

“Right,” Fifth said, still staring at the dead woman. Hals grabbed her hand and dragged her down a dirty road that normally had an informal flea market going. Everything was abandoned now, piles of knitted clothes, handmade bits of jewelry, and even a still-smoking grill. Hals spotted a pair of pants off of a small stall and grabbed them. She thrust them to Fifth, who struggled to pull them over her boots for a few seconds, nearly falling down.

Much closer than she’d realized, she heard someone shout a warning, and then she heard the familiar spin-up whir of Asendor’s mecha. Its laser cannon started firing, a rapid pulse of death. People started yelling and returning fire.

“Hurry. That’s our cue,” Li-Cha said. Hals ran to the end of the road and found what she’d been looking for: a nondescript door with a big wheel handle. She turned it and it didn’t budge. Locked.

“Li-Cha, do the honors,” Hals said, stepping back. Her friend powered up her blaster with a menacing hum, and she held the trigger down. After about ten seconds the door was melted slag. Hals kicked it with her prosthetic leg until it fell into the staircase it had once hidden, clanging down and coming to a stop at the bottom. The darkness seemed to call to Hals inviting her down into it. She took a deep breath, and they descended.

Thank you for reading along! This story isn’t finished, but the rest of it won’t be posted here (at least for awhile) since I’m trying to send it out and get it published. If you liked it and want to read more, subscribe below and you’ll get notified when I publish more (or when I get it published!)

The Wench– Ch 9: Serious Complications

“No!” she screamed, clutching Li-Cha friend to her, and Nador fired again. Then he shushed her.

“You’re playing your part very well, but quiet now,” he said. Hals grabbed Li-Cha and turned her over, about to shout her name, when Li-Cha’s hand clapped over her mouth. The other woman’s purple eyes begged her to be quiet. 

“You’re okay?” Hals asked. She turned her head slightly, and saw four scorch marks in the doorframe. Nador Leych holstered his weapon and put his hands in his pockets.

“Listen, Lianne. You need to get off this station, before sunrise. Or morning, or whatever they call it here.”

Hals was confused. Li-Cha let her go and straightened up, then offered Nador her hand. He gave her a tiny, tight smile before shaking. 

“I owed you, from the Baranpar Pit,” he said. “But next time, well…”

“I won’t let there be a next time,” Li-Cha said. “Thank you, Nador.”

He nodded, turned, and left the alley. Hals struggled to her feet, staring at the four scorch marks in the wall. The holes the blaster had made were inches deep, penetrating the metal frame almost entirely. Her shields almost certainly wouldn’t have stopped them.

“The hell?” Hals managed to whisper. “Your name is Lianne?”

Li-Cha stood up.

“Really, that is what you latch on to? You come by it honestly, Hals, I will give you that.”

“Lianne?!”

“It was, once,” Li-Cha said softly. “But we need to focus. Who do you love?”

“What?!” Hals asked, her voice pitching into hysteria. Li-Cha grabbed her shoulders and squeezed, hard.

“Who do you care most about on this station?” Li-Cha said slowly. Hals felt her brain start to catch up. Li-Cha started listing people off.

“Asendor, obviously. Probably Fifth too, you’ll feel responsible for her. Olfadden. And the girls from work, maybe? I’ll contact them, tell them to meet us. We’ll need a ship.”

“Stop!” Hals shouted. “What are you on about? What’s happening, and why--”

“We do not have time for questions,” Li-Cha yelled back. She whipped out her legible, a nice model with a triangular shape to it, and set up a video recording. 

“Listen to me: Adumon Station is in danger, and we need to get off it immediately. Meet me and Hals at–that ship, that Fifth was on. What was it called?”

“The-- the Golden Esposs,” Hals said. She never forgot a ship, even when she felt like a dunce.

“Meet us at a ship called the Golden Esposs before sunrise. If you can’t get there, find another way off the station. We’ll wait as long as we can. Hurry.”

She ended the recording and started to fiddle with her legible. Hals just stared at her, her mind barely able to keep up. “But, what if he was lying? What if--”

“Nador Leych doesn’t lie. That’s what is so infuriating about him,” Li-Cha said.

“And I think there are at least a thousand Centurium troops on Silver’s Culling that are going to march out and arrest everybody on this station come sunrise. We need to be gone by then. Sooner, if we can.”

Li-Cha looked around. “I don’t know where we are. Can you lead us back to the main road? We need a skimmer.”

Fortunately, Hals could. She led them wordlessly back into the warren of alleys, staircases and tunnels that wound through Silver Crescent. In just a few minutes they were nearing the main thoroughfare. Li-Cha hailed a skimmer and one landed in front of them, spraying them with a blast of icy wind and snow. They piled into it, and they were off, flying up through the simulated atmosphere and out into the empty space of the station. 

“You’re going to need to fly that ship, the one Fifth was on. Can you?” Li-Cha asked.

“I think so. I don’t know the model, but the principles don’t vary that much ship-to-ship. Li-Cha… shouldn’t we warn people what’s coming?”

“If we do, they’ll just attack sooner. Maybe once we’re safely on the ship and about to leave, we can send out a warning. But not before,” she said firmly. “You’ve got a good heart, but I’m not about to let it get you killed.”

They were nearing the edge of space where Silver’s Culling was docked, and Hals studied it again. The undamaged launch platforms, the plethora of weapons still intact, the lack of battle damage. The pieces were falling into place. She started, finally, to understand. And more importantly, to believe. She got her legible out and called Asendor. 

“Hals? Oh, and you found Li-Cha!” he said as the video call connected. “That was a strange message she just sent out, did you get it?” He was still at the Maiden’s Lament, and drunk. Hals saw that the taproom behind him was crowded still with the pirates Jane Neind had been sitting with. She bit her lip.

“Oh yeah, we’re fine,” she said. “Did you, um, listen to that message loudly?” she asked. “Did everybody hear it?”

“Oh I suspect so!” Asendor said, chuckling. “Couldn’t find the damn volume setting for the life of me. I think I’ll head home soon. I’ve made merry a bit too much, I think,” he said, laughing again. Hals looked over at Li-Cha, and the fear she felt was reflected in her friend’s purple eyes.

“Asendor, why don’t you hurry along? I’ll meet you at home and make some nice tea for you, so you don’t get a headache tomorrow,” Hals said.

“Oh yes, that would be delightful! I’ll see you shortly dear.” He blew a kiss at the camera and cut the connection. Li-Cha swore.

“I forgot he was still there,” she said. “If those pirates are in on it and with Jane Neind, they know we know now. Which means…”

“Which means we need to hurry even more,” Hals concluded. Suddenly the skimmer bucked and dropped violently, the acceleration pushing them into the bulkhead as it rolled out of the way of something.

“The hells was that?” Hals asked.

“Oh, no,” was all Li-Cha said. And then Hals saw what had made the skimmer change course. Things were launching from Silver’s Culling. A half dozen huge, teardrop shaped things were being disgorged from some of the launch tubes. As they fell toward Adumon Station, Hals felt her heart sink. “What are those?” she asked.

“Drop bunkers,” Li-Cha said, her voice small. “They’re little bases. Fallback points, or forward operating positions for an invasion force. Each can hold an entire division of ground troops, and they generate their own shields so you can’t just blast them.”

The bunkers moved silently as they shot through space. They hit the atmosphere almost all at once, one aimed at the tip of each of the four crescents, and two heading for the intersection in the middle.

“We’re too late,” Hals whispered.

“Yes,” Li-Cha said.

The 100 Failures Project

The Wench– Ch 8: Battle Lines

Outside the Maiden’s Lament, the blue glow of the sign reflected off of the fresh banks of snow and illuminated the street in an eerie glow. For a moment Hals had a distinct sense of being on another planet, one she’d rather never think about again. She shook her head and down the road, hoping to see Li-Cha waiting for a skimmer. She didn’t see anyone at all, nothing out of the ordinary, except the huge specter of Silver’s Culling disrupting the night’s skyline. And then she heard a muffled yell.

Normally, Hals wouldn’t involve herself in an alleyway scuffle. She’d already gotten into a fight on someone else’s behalf this week, she’d forgotten to reload the Gobbler which meant it only had two or three shots left at most; and besides: it wasn’t her business. Except…

Li-Cha wasn’t standing outside, and there was no telltale dustup in the snow showing that a skimmer had landed. Hals moved as quietly as she could through the snow to the alley next to the Maiden’s Lament, straining hard to hear another noise. She kept her gaze on the ground, grateful for the snow and the hints it gave her. Three sets of footprints, which became chaotic near the mouth of the alley furthest from the tavern. Hals followed.

She reached the corner and heard a muffled blow and a wheeze, and then she heard Jane Neind speaking.

“I heard somebody squealed to a pretty girl with purple eyes. Just my luck I didn’t have to go looking for you: you were right in my tavern. Why are you so interested in my ship, mmm?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Li-Cha spat. “Nobody’s said anything to me about you, and I don’t care about whatever stupid ship you landed with. I-” 

The sound of another blow, and Li-Cha moaned. Hals felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She pulled the Gobbler out and flicked the safety off. Hals wanted to rush around the corner immediately, but curiosity held her still. If Jane Neind, the number two of Redblink’s crew was roughing someone up for asking questions about their ship, it meant they were hiding something. Hals felt a sense of dread. Li-Cha had been right, but what was their deal? Their secret? Hals knelt in the snow and got as close to the wall as she could, then slowly leaned an eye out. 

She saw Li-Cha kneeling, blood on her lips and face. The man who’d been whispering to Jane Neind was jerking her head back by the hair. In front of her, with her arms crossed, was Jane Neind. She tutted and shook her head.

“No use lying to me, dear. The man holding back your pretty locks has been watching for snoops like you since we landed, and he hasn’t been wrong yet. But, you promise you don’t know anything?”

“I don’t!” Li-Cha insisted. She twisted and looked up at the man holding her by the hair, and Hals saw recognition spread across her face. Hals peered closer at him, but she couldn't make his features out in the dark alley. But presumably Li-Cha’s synthetic eyes could. She knew him.

“You,” she whispered.

“That’s right,” Jane Neind said, nodding slowly. She reached behind her and pulled out a long knife from inside her sleeveless jacket. Hals swung her arm around the corner and shot her.

It was a bad shot, but she had panicked when the knife came out. She didn’t take proper time to aim for the head, which meant Jane Neind’s shields didn’t crack when the Gobbler bolt hit her. Her shields lit up with red lightning as they absorbed the blast. Most of it, anyway: the blue haired pirate still had a smoking hole in her thigh, which made her collapse to one knee. The man holding Li-Cha threw her to one side and reached for the blaster at his hip, and this time Hals did aim carefully, and the blast hit him square in the forehead. But he didn’t fall down dead, as she’d expected: instead, he reeled back, clutching at the burn mark on his face and screaming. His shields were that good? She had no time to waste. She scrambled forward, reaching for Li-Cha.

“Come on!” Hals screamed. She squeezed a third shot off at the pirate captain, but her Gobbler just gurgled, and no laser blast came out. Hals swore. She was out. To her credit, it had only taken Li-Cha a second to realize what was happening. She aimed a kick at Jane Neind as the pirate swiped her dagger at her, kicking the blade into the snow, and then she was running toward Hals. Hals grabbed her hand and together they fled down the snow filled alleyway.

“Hals, it’s the Centurium!” Li-Cha panted as they ran. “That man, I know him. He’s an intelligence officer I used to work with named Nador Leych. If he’s here, the Feudal Queens are involved. We’re royally fucked.”

Hals could hear someone, presumably Leych, running after them. She doubted Jane Neind could run after the shot she’d taken to the leg. “Tell me later, when we’re safe!” Hals said, dragging Li-Cha further into the alleys of Silver Crescent. This part of Adumon Station was where most of the taverns had collected. Hals ran through a group of people standing outside and smoking, knocking two people down in her haste. She ignored the threats and shouts as their feet pounded against the road.

“You don’t understand!” Li-Cha said, nearly stumbling over a hidden bit of trash that had been obscured under a snow drift. “If he’s here, there isn’t anywhere safe! The entire station is in danger. The Centurium is here.”

Hals pulled Li-Cha into the shadow of a large doorway and tried the handle. The door was locked. She looked at Li-Cha. “Where’s your gun?”

“They knocked it out of my hand when they grabbed me,” Li-Cha said. “It’s in the snow near the Lament, somewhere.” 

Li-Cha was gulping down air, and Hals was out of breath too. She spared a glance back down the alley, and was relieved not to see anyone. They were safe, for the moment.

“Think we lost him,” she gasped.

“This is really bad,” Li-Cha said. “Really, really bad.”

“Well yeah, you almost got stabbed,” Hals said. “Jane Neind had a big, nasty looking knife.”

“Hals, listen,” Li-Cha said. “In another life… I was someone who learned secrets. And I worked for the Centurium, and the Feudal Queens. If Naydor Leych is here, that means the Centurium’s very best infiltrator is working with Jane Neind, who is working for Redblink! That ship-- I don’t think he stole it. I think he’s in league with them.”

Hals shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If they had him caught, they’d just arrest him: or just shoot him and spare themselves the drama of the trial.”

Hals looked over her shoulder, trying to come up with a plan. She needed a weapon or a place to hide; preferably both. Li-Cha grabbed her chin and forced Hals to look at her.

“Listen to me,” she said. “The only way Redblink is worth more to the Feudal Queen alive than dead is if he has something they want. What’s better than one of the Flagged pirate lords on a scaffold in front of their palace?”

“A thousand pirates. Or no… the port they call home. Adumon Station,” Hals said, realization dawning. “They’re here for the station.”

“And for everybody on it,” Li-Cha confirmed. “I know for a fact Adumon Station has been on the Feudal Queen’s radar for a while, but she couldn’t ever take it: the cost of attacking it was too high. But maybe she found a way.”

Hals held up a finger, silencing Li-Cha. She heard footsteps, softly crunching through fallen snow. She held her useless weapon in one hand, clutching to it despite the fact that it wouldn’t fire. Perhaps it would be enough to intimidate with it. Though, judging from the fact that she’d shot him in the head already and he’d managed to survive, she didn’t think so.

Hals peeked around the doorway they were hiding in, but didn’t see anyone. The sound of crunching snow had stopped as well. She held her breath, aware of the rising plumes that she and Li-Cha were releasing due to the cold air. Li-Cha had her hands balled into fists, and she leaned on Hals and looked out with her. Distantly, a few red blasts from a laser soared up into the sky. Maybe a gunfight, but probably just someone celebrating, or showing off. She heard the sound of a woman laughing, a bawdy hawing noise that reminded her of a farm animal from the planet she grew up on. And then something cold slid against the back of her neck.

“Freeze,” the man said. “Both of you, or the little friend eats laser.”

Hals raised her hands, and the man took her Gobbler gently. “Now both of you, stand up and turn around, thanks.” He withdrew slightly, and Hals turned slowly, keeping her hands visible. Her mind raced. How had he gotten behind them? How could they get out of this?

She turned and got a clear view of the man who’d been chasing them. He was unremarkable, not particularly handsome, with dirty black hair and dark eyes. His dark complexion suggested he’d grown up on a planet close to its sun, which narrowed the choices down almost not at all. The blaster in his hand, however, told Hals quite a bit more about him. It was a small thing, barely bigger than her Gobbler, but it was longer and sleek, made out of a metal Hals couldn’t immediately identify. There were two barrels, and the one on the right was shorter and thicker. Since it was pointed right at her nose, she could see it was rifled. Which meant his weapon fired slugs and laser blasts. Versatile, and useful. And very, very expensive. Core world tech.

“Hi, Nador,” Li-Cha said. “You’re quieter than I remember.”

He snorted, but didn’t take his eyes off of Hals. They were hard eyes. They told her he could shoot her without losing a wink of sleep. She focused on breathing slowly, and waiting for Li-Cha to give her an opening. She’d grab for the gun, hopefully get it out of the way before she got shot. 

“Don’t even try it, hero girl,” he said, as if reading her mind. He took another step back, out of arm’s reach. Hals cursed under her breath.

“Nador,” Li-Cha said. “What are you doing here? Working with that pirate?”

“Could ask you the same. I always wondered where you slunk off to, ya know. People guessed you’d gotten tired of the life, settled down with some rich prick and stole a moon from him or something. Didn’t expect to find you here. You’re dead, by the way.”

Hals went cold. She debated charging him, but Li-Cha reached down and squeezed her hand, and didn’t let go. 

“I am, am I?”

“Yeah,” he said, and he pulled the trigger three times. The blasts were purple and blinding, and Hals fell back as they went off, Li-Cha collapsing into her.

The Wench– Ch. 7: Misunderstandings

After the revelation of the Red Queen’s Vint, it was a long night of serving at the Maiden’s Lament. Hals passed the time by occasionally peeking out the window at the snowfall. Around one in the morning it finally let up. Fortunately for the drunk patrons in the Lament, sleeping on, across, and under the various tables and benches in the bar was a classic passtime for the average pirate.

Already, snores filled the air, and Hals knew Olfadden would be making quite a bundle of coin in the morning with hot coffee and fresh crispy kirkuk flank he kept specifically for mornings after a rowdy crew landed on the station. He’d charge them far more than typical for the goods, but they’d be hung over and hungry and he’d make a nice mint.

Flagged Captain Jane Neind hadn’t shared a drop of her priceless vint. She spent the entire evening staring into it like it held the secrets of the universe, sipping like it was the last kiss from a lover, and when one of her men jokingly suggested making a wager for a sip, she shot a hole through his hand. As Hals watched, she drained the last of the bottle dry, holding it above her mouth like a woman stranded in a desert, trying to eke out the final life-saving drop. For a while after she stared into it, playing with the tinkling starglass inside the bottle. Hals wondered if she’d smash the bottle to get at the valuable glass, but she didn’t.

Serving became less of a hectic dash, and more a casual affair. When someone wanted something, they’d raise an empty glass or shout, or just look about and make eye contact with one of the serving wenches. 

A dozen of the pirates were snoring on the tables, others were singing a lewd and poorly rhymed shanty they’d made up on the spot. Li-Cha, Bishop, Azphira and Hals were sitting in a corner booth together, sharing a normal bottle of vint. Asendor still sat at the bar, deep in his cups, a happy smile on his face.

“I wish I could have snuck a taste of that bottle,” Azphira said wistfully. She was one of those people who had grown up on a starship, and her bones and limbs were elongated because of a distinct lack of gravity on her body during its prime growing years. She was almost seven feet tall and had thin, beautiful fingers that gripped her vint glass with careless ease. Her eyes were almost the exact same dark brown as her skin, and they sparkled with longing. She sighed again, passing Bishop the vint bottle. 

Bishop had skin as black as the night sky and wore clothes to match, and had so many tattoos that it was sometimes difficult to look at her without becoming lost in the whorls and twisting patterns inked into her flesh. Once she joked that she’d given a bloke a strip dance and hypnotized him, just by gyrating the right way. Hals did notice she had a sort of languid grace to her movements, like she was dancing anywhere she went. But when she spoke, her voice was that of a rusty sailor speaking around a mouthful of bolts.

“I think she was playing it up for the audience. No drink can be as good as all that,” Bishop said.

“Perhaps it was enchanted, somehow,” Li-Cha mused, as she counted the O-marks she’d been given as a tip by a particularly affectionate pirate, who was now drooling on the floor. He’d gotten a bit handsy, so his final drink had been spiked with something Olfadden kept behind the counter for “pacification purposes.” Hals didn’t know what it was, but nobody ever died from it and it always sent them into a long sleep, so she didn’t really care.

“Or blessed,” Hals said quietly. 

“Cursed, more like,” Azphira said. “It was grown from the ashes of a billion dead souls, and a trillion dead creatures. Nothing good can come of that.”

“Except a bottle of vint, evidently,” Hals said. She fished out the coin she’d gotten from Olfadden and examined it. It was an odd bit of flash, it looked more like a piece of a machine than a bit of treasure. It was made of gossamer steel, or some other kind of white-gold alloy. All along its circumference were ridges and obtuse angles, twisting shapes that made Hals think of a key. The faces of the coin were identical, a pair of concentric circles entwined around a white gem, with a seemingly random assortment of grooves traveling in and around them. Hals held it up to the girls.

“My fellow wenches, any idea what to make of this?”

Bishop plucked it from her fingers and gave it a toss. “Looks like cheap shit to me, Hals,” she said. She passed it to Li-Cha, who shrugged and handed it to Azphira.

She gave it a closer look, using her hyperlong fingers to trace the whorls and eying the sides of it, and running an extra long thumb along its length. “Reminds me of a Clavcoin, a little. It’s the wrong shape, though: those usually had a hole in the middle, not a gem.”

“What’s that?” Li-Cha asked. “Clavcoin?”

“Spacers used to use them so nobody could steal their ships. Back before bioscans and DNA register locks.  It usually looked like this, or a bit smaller. A lot of the older Neverspace drives won’t work unless one of these are inserted; sometimes the entire ship wouldn’t turn on unless this is onboard. It varies. But this is probably just a decorative thing, made to look like one.”

“Yeah, I doubt Jane Neind gave me the keys to her starship as a tip,” Hals said, taking the coin from Azphira and tucking it away. She cast a glance around the tavern floor to see if anybody needed anything. Jane Neind and her cohort had started a game of cards, and there was a hefty amount of money on their table. A few other spacers and some Flagless pirates had circled around to watch.

“Might be able to land a nice tip if I bring a round over where the action’s happening,” Bishop said, thumbing over to the card game. “Be back in a bit.”

“I’ll circle around the room and ask for orders. You two are doing it next, though,” Azphira said. She rose as well, and Hals and Li-Cha were alone. Hals cleared her throat. Maybe now they could talk about what happened. Or more specifically, what almost happened.

“So,” Hals said, a bit of color rising to her cheeks. Li-Cha got up and scooted around the booth to sit next to her. Their thighs touched and Li-Cha leaned her head against Hals and sighed. She was sweaty and her makeup wasn’t nearly as pretty as it had been at the start of the night, but Hals still felt her heart start to hammer.

“Hals,” Li-Cha said quietly. “I haven’t been able to find out anything about Silver’s Culling. How they got it.”

Hals blinked. That was what she wanted to talk about?

“What, did you roll a few pirates to try and find out answers?” Hals asked, laughing. Li-Cha didn’t laugh though: she nodded.

“Yes,” Li-Cha said. “And none of them knew. And people always tell me when I ask.”

Hals felt a heat rise in her cheeks. “Wait-- I… I thought… So you really just slept with people to try and find out how they captured Silver’s Culling? How many? Why’s it matter so much? It’s an oddity, sure, but…”

Li-Cha shook her head, her purple eyes boring into Hals with urgency. “You’re not paying attention. Something is wrong with that ship.”

Hals cleared her throat. “Look, I’m not… it’s not like I haven’t had a roll to try and get something from someone before. Hell, we all have,” she said. “But I thought… I thought you–that I–that it meant something, last night.”

Hals said. Her face felt hot, and her chest was tight. She took a deep swig of the vint and finished it off, scowling at the gritty debris at the bottle’s bottom. Cheap shit.

“Oh,” Li-Cha said, in a soft voice. She wrapped her hands around one Hals’s. “You don’t understand. For me, sex isn’t… it’s not like it is for most people. For you. It’s… a tool I have. Like these eyes.” She touched her face briefly, her purple gaze watery. “I wanted to make you feel safe, and I thought that would help. But I see now, that was stupid. I do care about you, a lot. Just…”

“Just, you’re fucking people to get information,” Hals said, her voice catching slightly. “Who the hells cares how they even got that stupid ship, anyway?” She wiped her eyes furiously, embarrassed that Li-Cha’s casual attitude was affecting her so much.

“Something is wrong with that ship, Hals,” Li-Cha said quietly. “And I am really good at getting answers. I use all the tools I have to do it. I’m not ashamed of that.”

“Well maybe you should be,” Hals said bitterly. She regretted it immediately, but Li-Cha was already pulling away. The other woman withdrew her hands, and they tightened into fists.

“Perhaps I should be embarrassed by my choice in friends, instead,” she whispered. 

“I always wondered how you afforded a place in Green Crescent, but I guess now I know.” The words tumbled out and Hals wished she could button her lips closed. She’d had too much of the vint. Or maybe her heart was really hurting and she wanted to make sure Li-Cha knew it. 

“Just, stay away from Redblink’s crew, okay?” Li-Cha said, standing up. She turned away, then hesitated.

 “When you talked about your past last night, you shared who you really are with me. I… thought I could do the same. Safely.” A tear fell down her face. “But I guess I am the asshole for assuming.” She turned and walked toward the bar, whispered a few words to Olfadden, and then she was gone, out into the snow.

 Hals sat at the empty table, rolling the vint bottle between her hands. The other wenches seemed to sense that she needed a moment alone, and left her to her misery. Bishop popped a pick-me-up on the table and gave Hals a friendly, sad smile before trotting off to take more orders. Hals drained all of it, gulping the burning drink down, hoping it would smother the feeling of shame that was trying to rise in her breast. The door opened again, and Hals had to stop herself from turning to look back in hope. It was just another pirate. He walked over to Jane Neind’s table and said something to her. She looked annoyed, being distracted from her cards, but the newcomer bent over her and started whispering in her ear, and her expression changed subtly. If Hals didn’t know better, she’d have said the big blue woman looked worried.

Abruptly she stood, folding her hand and following the newcomer outside.

A shadow fell across Hals’s table, and shelooked up to see Olfadden. He folded his hands in front of himself and gave her a knowing stare. She met his gaze and didn’t blink.

“What?” she asked.

“You should go talk to Li-Cha. She just quit.”

Hals felt her stomach sour. “She what?”

“She said she can’t work with you anymore. Seems strange to me. I thought you got along swimmingly.”

“I--”

“Why’d my best server just quit, Hals?” Olfadden asked darkly.

“I thought I was your best,” Hals said weakly. The joke didn’t land. Olfadden just kept staring.

“I, um. I insulted her, I think.”

“You think.” Olfadden sat back slightly, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hals. Listen. We’ve known each other a few years now. And I know how you feel about Li-Cha.”

Hals opened her mouth to protest, but he waved a hand to cut her off. “No, don’t bother. It’s plain to see. And if I’m being honest, I think Li-Cha feels the same way. But how she makes her money isn’t just serving drinks here. I’ve known that for a while, and I think you knew too, even though you didn’t want to. But the question is, do you care enough to lose her over it?”

Hals didn’t know how to respond. Desperate to avoid the piercing gaze across the table from her, she glanced around the taproom. Jane Neind was still gone, but the tavern’s sign caught her eye. The sign had always puzzled her: a woman’s face with a blue eye, and an equally blue tear falling from it. She glanced at Olfadden, who’d pulled out a pipe and was in the process of lighting it. He was still staring at her.

“I think I get it now,” she said, gesturing to the sign. “That’s Jane, isn’t it?”

“It might be. But–”

Hals sighed. “I know, I know. I’ll talk to Li-Cha.”

“I don’t care about your relationship,” he snorted. “Just get me my server back.”

Hals scowled at him. “I know you don’t really mean that,” she said. “But I don’t know why you won’t admit you care. Caring about the people in your life isn’t a bad thing, Olf.”

He shrugged and blew out a smoke ring. “Maybe not. But it’s not served me too well in the past.”

Hals sighed and got up from the booth. “Maybe it’s time for us both to try something new, then.”

The Wench– Ch. 6: Queen's Red Vint

The Wench– CHAPTER SIX

The Queen’s Red Vint— A wine born from a dead planet’s ashes.

Hals woke up sore. The cot wasn’t comfortable, but it was better than the floor, and somebody had draped her blanket over her sometime while she slept. Hals groaned softly and checked the time on the legible wrapped around her wrist. It was evening. Almost time to head to work. Outside, she heard the sounds of revelry. Silver’s Culling was still in port, then. 

Hals got up and went to the bathroom to change and clean up. She stripped down and took a moment to survey the bruises and wounds. She was healing well, and nothing looked broken or infected. That was good, at least. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a spare uniform for work (well she did, but it was back at her exploded apartment). She eyed the balled-up, grimy, blood-covered work clothes she’d thrown in her go-bag with dismay. She’d have to show up to work in her civvie clothes. Olfadden wouldn’t be happy.

A knock on the bathroom door. “Hals? Li-Cha dropped by earlier to check on you. She brought you a uniform too, I’ve got it here.”

“If it's one of hers, it’ll be tight in all the wrong places,” Hals said, opening the door . Ascendor had his back to her and was very pointedly looking away as he handed her the jumpsuit. “Better than going in nude,” he said, still not looking. 

Hals flashed him a grin that she was pretty sure he saw before letting the door close most of the way. She changed out of her clothes and did her best to comb her hair with her fingers. The jumpsuit wasn’t the perfect fit, but it was better than nothing.

“You know, you’ve seen me naked before,” Hals said as she dressed. “You don’t have to act like you haven’t.”

“Your being naked was incidental to the work I was doing at the time,” Asendor said. “It’s different.”

“If you say so,” Hals said, zipping the suit up and stepping out. “Fifth still around?”

“She went out, but she promised she’d be back tonight. She helped me around today, cleaning things. Dusting. She’s a tall girl, got to the top shelves.”

“You believe her?” Hals asked.

“That she’ll be back? I hope so. She’s out of her depth, Core-world girl like that in a place like this.”

“She’s got grit. She’ll be okay.”

Asendor nodded. “I hope so, too. I could use the help. Not as young as I used to be.”

“Me either,” Hals sighed. Asendor laughed, and it sounded a bit like a skimmer coming in for a bumpy landing. “You’re barely thirty.”

“You’re barely fifty,” Hals countered. 

“Honestly I’m not sure about that. I spent a lot of time out in the black. Time can do some strange things to the body in Neverspace.”

Hals nodded. She’d spent her fair share of time there, too. Not so much as him, of course, but enough.

“Anyways. What’s up with the Culling?”

“It’s still there, and it’s still disgorging pirates at an alarming rate. I’ve had a few people come in from it for repair work, or patch jobs. I’m almost out of synthetic skin. A few others were selling parts they’d stripped, either from that ship or some other one they raided. Got a real nice cell-printer for almost nothing. Poor trollop didn’t know what she had.”

“I could use a tune-up on my foot, once I get the money together,” Hals said, eying her left leg. “The joints are getting pretty visible.”

“Care to show me now?” Asendor asked. “Nobody in the shop currently. I’ll probably lock up soon. Nobody will be coming in here anyway; every place that serves beer and food has thrown their doors open wide. There’s going to be a lot of business to be had tonight.”

“Hopefully I’ll make some nice tips, then,” Hals sighed. “I just love depending on the generosity of pirates.”

“About that. Hals… you sure going back to the Lament is smart? You killed a group of people yesterday like it was nothing, and the ones still alive know you work there.”

Hals bobbed her head for a moment, waiting for the rest. 

“Get one with it, then,” she sighed, leaning against the security mecha. “Tell me what I should do instead. I’m sure Li-Cha gave you the whole story.”

“As much as she knew, yes. You left the weapons you took off those pirates at her place, by the way. She brought them here.” Asendor gestured to one of the messy tables, where a small corner had been cleared. There were four carbines, and an extra hand cannon. Blue-beamers, she remembered. 

“So?” she asked. “What do you really want to say to me, Sen?”

“I want to know how the fuck you killed that many people with barely a scratch,” he said. “I know… we don’t talk about the past, here. With us. But that’s…”

Hals shrugged. “What do you want me to say? I used to run on a pirate ship, same as you, and probably Li-Cha, and half the people on this station. I got good at using my guns. But that was a long time ago!”

“I’m not mad at you, Hals,” Asendor said, raising his hands. Hals realized she’d taken a step closer to him, her hands balled into fists. She took a calming breath. 

“Sorry.”

“I’m only asking because I care. Most tavern girls don’t murder people and then sleep that easily.”

“Not your average tavern wench,” she said in a sing-song voice. Where had she first heard that song, anyway? She couldn’t remember.

“I’d wager not. I guess I just want to know that you’re ok. Not just physically,” he said, cutting her off. “But, I guess… that you’re not in trouble.”

Hals sighed. She did not want to have this conversation right now. “I’m fine, Sen. Really.”

He regarded her for a long time, then nodded. “Okay. I know someone I can sell those weapons to, get you some decent coin. Especially with the Culling in port, I’ll wager there are some ambitious pirates looking for an upgrade. And that hardware isn’t bad.”

“I’d appreciate that. Take a cut of the profits, for your troubles,” Hals said, relieved they had changed the subject.

“Fret not, my dear Halsirena; I was planning to,” Asendor said with a grin. “I imagine you used the Declaration? How’d it hold up?”

“I hate that name,” Hals moaned. She walked to the kitchen and started to root around in the fridge for the makings of a sandwich. 

“It’s a great name for a gun! That piece has history, a legacy! Least you could do is use it.”

“It’s a ZSO-1. Just because that particular gun did something a few hundred years ago doesn’t make it special.”

“It started the Kaliphox War, the first shot that signaled independence from the Core! That gun was a part of that!”

“And now it’s mine. How the mighty have fallen. And I don’t need to remind you how that war ended for the Kaliphox.”

“No, I suppose not. But that weapon still matters.”

“Not to me.”

Asendor screwed up his face in frustration. “You are unbelievable,” he sighed. “I suppose you need more ammunition, but I don’t know if I want to get it for you now.”

“I know how to get it myself, Sen.”

“Well yes, but I could trade one of those guns to my client for a full Hefty bandolier of uranium slugs.”

Hals raised an eyebrow. “No shit?”

“But you have to promise to respect what that gun is. What it was, anyway.”

Asendor’s face took on a superior glee as Hals groaned and nodded. “Fine, I’ll call it the Declaration. Happy?”

“Not remotely, that beautiful piece belongs in a museum.”

“You can sell it to one when I’m dead,” Hals teased. She made herself a sandwich and one for Asendor, and they ate in companionable silence.

“Still gonna go in?”

“I’ll go for a bit. Chat with Olfadden, explain that I might need to lay low. With this many pirates in the port, I’m not too worried about retribution,” Hals said.

“If you’re sure. I should have a real bed for you this evening, or at least something better than that old cot. And for Fifth too. I’m going shopping.”

“Don’t burden yourself on my account,” Hals said around a mouthful of food.

“I’m not. I’m taking the cost of it out of the money I’ll make pawning those blasters.”

Hals almost choked from laughing. Asendor pounded her back, and she got herself some sort of purple juice from the fridge and chugged it to clear her throat. It was tart, with a tingle of sweetness after.

“That’s good stuff,” she said.

“It helps me stay regular,” Asendor said.

“What?”

“It’s prune juice. Don’t drink too much, you’ll regret it.”

“You are getting old,” Hals said. Her legible vibrated, and she stretched it out to the size of a small screen. It was a message from Li-Cha, checking if she was OK, and asking if she’d be at work that night. Hals responded in the affirmative.

“I’d better get going. Hals walked into the front of the store and looked out the bay window at the steadily falling snow. 

“I’d hoped the atmosphere regulators would have put a stop to that,” she sighed.

“I’ll call you a skimmer. Don’t want you to show up to work wet and cold and tired,” Asendor said.

“I’d really appreciate it,” Hals admitted.

“In fact, I think I’ll go with you tonight. I haven’t been to the Maiden’s Lament in a few weeks.”

“You just want me to slip you free drinks on the sly,” Hals teased. Asendor grinned, using his own legible, a much more sophisticated model that included a digital projector instead of a physical screen. 

“I’m glad we understand each other, my friend.” 

The skimmer arrived, and they flew. Now that she was less exhausted, Hals took the time to appreciate Silver’s Culling in full. It was so large it was actually causing skimmers to have to redirect their normal flight paths. As they floated over it, Hals evaluated it with a practiced eye.

“That’s interesting. There’s no battle scars, at all.”

“How do you mean?” Asendor asked, leaning over to her side of the skimmer to look.

“Normally when you take over a ship like that, you do it by forcefully boarding around one of the big airlocks. You can establish a beachead, sort of a base of ops, and from there you can plan your attacks. So there, that big launch bay? That should have lots of damage around it where they killed the shields before boarding. But it doesn’t.”

“Perhaps they entered another way. The ship is supremely large, there might be another airlock on the other side, where we can’t see.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Hals said. “I’d have hit them all at once, though.”

The skimmer continued flying. Hals had too much on her mind, and she was sure this wouldn’t be a fun night of work. She was distracted. She barely noticed how beautiful the station was covered in snow. From on high, as they skipped around Silver’s Culling, Adumon Station looked like it was made entirely of crystal. Like a pure ice comet, with none of the dirt and rock. She barely saw it. The skimmer finished its route and settled down near the Maiden’s Lament. 

“Should we arrive together, or should I walk the block?” Asendor asked.

“I don’t care.”

“I’ll take a stroll. It’s a nice evening. Beautiful when it snows, isn’t it?”

Hals murmured an affirmative and Asendor seemed to pick up on her mood, because he gave her shoulder a squeeze and left her without another word, whistling slightly as he strode along the powdery streets. With his silver walking stick and the big coat he’d put on before leaving, he looked almost regal, trotting out of sight down the road, tipping his hat at passersby. Hals smiled a bit. 

As she assumed it would be, the Maiden’s Lament was an uproar of rowdy pirates, all drinking and gambling and having a terrific good time. Li-Cha was there, as were the other two serving wenches, Bishop and Azphira. They all looked a little haggard, except Li-Cha, who also looked like she was having the time of her life. Olfadden saw her and waved her behind the bar. She got there quickly, dancing and weaving between tables and people. He looked relieved to see her too.

“I have a special job for you tonight,” he said, wrapping a massive hand around her arm and steering her to face the bar. Hals normally wouldn’t let someone touch her that way, but Olfadden was one of the few who got a pass. One, she didn’t think he even realized what he was doing; that was just how he dealt with people, and two: she wasn't sure if she could stop him without breaking his nose and losing her job.

“See that woman with the big blue hat?” he asked, leaning close. He didn’t wait for her to respond. “She’s a high up Flagged, off of Redblink’s ship. Called the Silver’s Culling, I heard tell. I want you to serve her and her table tonight, and nobody else. Whatever they need, you bring it. Okay?”

Hals frowned. It was incredibly busy in the Lament; there were easily a hundred people. Having her focus on one pirate, even a high-up one, seemed nonsensical. She was about to say so when she caught Olfadden’s gaze. He looked frightened. He was holding himself with a kind of tension, like he was expecting a glass to break. Hals hadn’t seen him that way, not in all the years she’d worked for him.

“Okay,” she said, touching his hand gently and removing it from her arm. “What am I really doing, though?”

“Don’t give her a reason to be unhappy,” Olfadden said in a low voice. “She can make problems for us, and no force on this station could stop it if she decides to start trouble.”

“She’s that high up?”

“Second Flagged, after this most recent mission. You can see the patch on her left.”

Hals looked and indeed, the blue hatted woman seemed to be sitting in a way that everybody could catch a glimpse at the freshly sewn patch on her collar, a mocking approximation of a naval badge rank a Core sailor would wear. It was a red pair of dots with an upward facing arrow. Hals hadn’t seen its like before; but it clearly meant something to Olfadden.

“Did you fly with Redblink, once upon a time?” she asked him. He nodded, but said nothing else. “Take care, okay? She has a temper. Her name is Jane Neind.”

“You got it boss,” Hals said solemnly. In the back of her mind, she wondered if she’d be able to learn about the Culling at the same time. Surely this woman would know how the ship was taken.

Hals counted the number of people at Jane Neind’s table and loaded up a tray with ales, plus a fizzing, sparking pick-me-up. She approached the table, shouted: “These are from Olfadden, on the house!” and started passing the drinks out. The pirates around Jane Neind accepted with excited roars or by draining whatever drink they were working on to replace it with a fresh one. Most were tipsy already, Jane Neind was absolutely sloshed. This close, Hals took a moment to study her as she slammed back the pick-me-up. 

Jane Neind was first and foremost a big woman; loud, boisterous, and heavy with muscle. Hals next got the impression of the color blue: from her hat to her clothes and even her eyes, the color was everywhere on her. Her large leather coat had no sleeves to better show off her powerful arms. Her hair was a curly muddy brown, and her eyes were never still, always jumping around to see who was talking, who was listening, and who wasn’t. Her gaze skated right over Hals.

“Anything else I can get you?” Hals asked sweetly. 

“Flyin’ Dog for me!” one woman said. 

“Two of those!” added another.

“Get me a Shock and Awe, wench!” the only man at the table shouted.

Hals dutifully memorized the orders, then turned to Jane Neind. “And you, lady?”

The pirate snorted. “A lady I am not. Captain, though, ye can call me.”

“Of course, Captain Neind,” Hals said. “Care for another drink, or some food?”

“I want the most expensive bottle in this place,” she drawled. Hals stiffened; free beers were one thing, but Olfadden had some truly top-shelf stuff. Things you couldn’t really get outside the Core. He couldn’t just give that to her for free, could he?

The question was resolved before Hals could ask it though: Jane Neind dipped a fist into the cavernous pocket of her big blue leather coat and passed something to Hals without even looking at it. A fistful of treasure into Hals’s hand. A few pieces of starglass shimmered, as well as a large gold coin, and a finely wrought bangle of some kind, covered in twisting wires of gold, reyfinite, and platinum.

“Keep us in drink until we pass out,” she added, then shooed Hals away. Hals closed her fist quickly around the payment and scurried back to the bar to fulfill the orders and give Olfadden the payment.

“She wants the most choice bottle you’ve got. Is this enough to cover it?” Hals asked, showing him the treasure. Olfadden had given up the lifestyle, but like a true pirate, his eyes still lit up when he spotted treasure. He took it from Hals and examined the haul. Li-Cha scooted past and refilled her tray, flashing Hals a smile as she did, and Bishop grabbed a big tray of food from the kitchen window and turned to deliver it. 

“Here, Hals,” he said, passing her the gold coin. “Keep that for yourself.”

Hals pocketed the coin with a puzzled expression. Olfadden didn’t usually tip-out the wenches in his tavern.

“That old louse just paid for the drinks of every pirate in here twice over. Least I can do for you. Heard there was trouble last night. If you need to get scarce for a week or two, just let one of the others know.” 

Hals stared at him, deep into his big, kindly eyes that crinkled in a smile for just a second. 

“You’re made of starstuff, Olfadden.”

“You know it,” he said. Then he cleared his throat and banged his huge, meaty fists on the bartop thrice. Somehow the sound carried through the Maiden’s Lament, silencing conversations and stopping drunk pirates mid quaff. 

“Attention! You’re all about to witness something that hasn’t ever been seen outside a Core planet. I am about to open a bottle of Royal Red for that pirate, the great Captain Jane Neind.” 

Olfadden reached under the bar and pressed his hand against a nondescript panel, which beeped as it scanned his palmprint. It slid open without a sound and Hals caught sight of three very different bottles, one huge and thick like a club, one tiny like a bottle of perfume, and a sphere of some kind. That was what he grabbed, and he held it aloft for the entire Lament to see. It caught the light and shimmered a dull ruby color. The bottle was almost perfectly round, except for the few centimeters where the spout was. Something white glimmered where the stopper normally would be. Hals leaned closer to get a good look.

“Now, what’s so special about this bottle?” Olfadden asked the bar. “Does anybody know?”

The rowdy pirates were unusually rapt and quiet at the question. One woman in the back corner raised her whiskey and said: “It’s made from a dead planet!”

“She drinks for free tonight!” Olfadden responded, eliciting a few cheers from the woman and her companions. “That’s exactly right. The first planet the line of Feudal Queens conquered was Alador II, a bastion of herbs, fruits, and drink the like of which this galaxy has not seen since. That planet rebelled against Feudal Queen Sibyl Tillida the Mad, and she didn’t have an army big enough to take the planet back. So, she burned it from space, killing everyone and everything. And after forty days of bombardment, when the ashes of every living thing were swirling in the air, the oceans boiled, and the atmosphere naught but ash, she had a sample of the planet’s soil brought to her,” Olfadden said. 

At some point during his story Asendor had snuck into the bar, and was now standing near the door listening with an amused expression on his face. The bar was rapt. Even Li-Cha, Bishop, and Azphira had stopped serving to listen.

“The Mad Queen took the last harvest of grapes from that planet and the charred soil of Alador II and planted herself a private garden. I’m not at liberty to say how I got myself a bottle of this vint,” he said, spreading his hands wide and accepting the groans from the crowd with a grin. “But I can tell you that it is genuine, I stake my reputation on it. This is vint only Queens can drink, made from fruit that only exists in one place in the galaxy, grown in the soil of a million-million dead things, the ashes of an entire planet. And lest ye doubt the authenticity, every authentic bottle is sealed such as this one, with a piece of perfect starglass. Captain, if you would approach and inspect it?”

Jane Neind stood and tottered over to the bar. Every eye was on her, and she seemed to be absolutely loving it. She leaned on the bar and took the bottle with both hands.

“Do you see the starglass, captain? It is wider at the base and narrow at the tip, as you can see. This bottle was formed around the piece of starglass, and filling it with vint pushed the stopper into place. It is said to be impossible to get a starglass stopper back into one of these bottles after it has been opened. But see for yourself: has it been opened or tampered with in any way?” Olfadden asked. 

He was still performing, but he got a little nervous as Jane Neind approached. Hals doubted anybody else would have noticed the little lines of strain that appeared around his eyes, or the way his hands pressed against the bar top harder than they normally did. Something about her made him wary, and it put Hals on edge too. For her part, she seemed to pay him no mind.

“It’s perfectly sealed!” she declared, after she gave it a languorous once over in full view of the rest of the bar.

“And so it is. If I may?” Olfadden took the bottle back gently, wrapped it in a towel, and set it on the bar. Then he got out a shot glass and a small, smoking cube of comet ice. 

“Starglass shrinks in the cold, and expands in the heat. That’s why its so useful in ships, and why we value it so,” he told the crowd, trapping the piece of ice against the bottle stopper with his shot glass. “The only true way to open a bottle sealed like this is to do exactly what I’m doing; otherwise you risk shattering it and wasting this precious vint. Watch closely, now.”

Using the meat of his hand, he tapped the shot glass against the starglass stopper a few times. Each tap seemed to echo throughout the silent tavern. The glass stopper trembled with each blow, contracting visibly until on the fourth strike, it popped loose and fell into the bottle with a small splash. A few people gasped, and Jane Neind looked at the bottle with avarice in her blue eyes. Olfadden held it out to her gently, and she took it with a reverence that surprised Hals. She had been moved by Olfadden’s speech. Or she was pretending she had been.

Slowly, she raised the vint to her lips and took a sip, her eyes closed. The whole room listened as she slurped and a soft ‘ah’ escaped her lips. Jane Neind sighed like a she’d just been kissed. 

“It’s like falling in love,” she whispered. She drank again, more seriously this time, and the entirety of the Maiden’s Lament watched her wipe a tear from her eye.

“It’s just booze,” she said. “How?” She cradled the bottle like a newborn and gave Olfadden a very serious and surprisingly courtly bow. “I did not know this is what you had, when I asked for the best.”

“Which is why I gave it,” Olfadden said so quietly, Hals wasn’t sure anybody else had heard him. Their eye contact held for several seconds before she nodded and went back to her table. Everyone in the tavern, particularly her companions, watched her as she sat. Hopeful, perhaps, that she’d offer a taste of the legendary vint. But she did not. She held the bottle to herself, sipping it and sighing, and very slowly, the noise returned to the tavern. Asendor scooted up to the bartop and raised two fingers in salute. 

“I came in just at the right time,” he said to Olfadden. “Truly, a bottle of the Feudal Queen’s vint?”

“Truly,” Olfadden said. “The greatest treasure I ever found.”

“And you did not drink it yourself,” Asendor said. “I admire the strength of your resolve. I’d not have been able to resist.”

The big bartender shrugged.” I knew it would come in handy, one day, for settling a debt.”

“And what debt is that?” Hals asked, stepping close to him. “Surely no debt wasn’t so large as that. The treasure she paid you in, it couldn’t begin to scratch the cost of that bottle, if half of what you said is true.”

Olfadden gave her a flat look. “It’s all true,” he said. “And this is not a matter of coin and treasure. It’s a debt far deeper. She did not come here to drink and be fawned over by Flagless pirates. She came to see me, to settle our accounts. And now it’s done. Without violence, thankfully.”

“You expected a tussle?” Hals asked. Olfadden gave her a very long, heartbroken stare. Then he smiled, just barely.

“Even when we were married, I never knew what to expect from her. And when I left, I did it without giving her a goodbye. I thought… well, it matters little, now. She accepted the peace offering, I think.”

Hals felt her jaw drop, and Asendor looked equally surprised, his eyebrows leaping near the top of his bald head. Olfadden grabbed a glass and started polishing it. “Hals, you don’t need to give their table so much attention now. Help the other girls out,” he said. “Hop to.”

Hals nodded, still wheeling from the revelation that Olfadden had been married. And he’d left her, and the life of a pirate, seemingly at the same time. Hals wondered why. She didn’t have the courage to ask him, so she went back to serving.

The Wench– Ch. 5: A Pirate's Life

Hals spent about half an hour trying to learn how exactly Silver’s Culling had been captured by Redblink and his crew, and she heard ten different stories that didn’t match up hardly at all. She’d been groped, shouted at, shot at, and she was angry, tired, and ready to kill the next pirate who swept in for a “victor’s kiss.”

The sim-lamps that lined the streets started to brighten to signal the rise of the nonexistent sun, and Hals found Li-Cha again. They met up at the main intersection of all four crescents called Wazishaki Concourse, which was usually full of market stalls and featured a gigantic water fountain; the only one on the station. A great many of the Redblink pirates had convened here. There were several were swimming in the fountain and laughing, others were already drunk, as someone had started passing out mugs of frothy ale. The savvy business owners could smell the opportunity a bunch of rowdy, victorious pirates presented,  so the eateries and pubs and distilleries around the square and all across the entire station threw their doors open to the newly arrived pirates who were eager to spend their loot.

Li-Cha was sipping on an ale and looking perturbed, leaning against the side of a parked skimmer.

“Got a bunch of different stories?” Hals asked her.

“Yes I did. There was a peculiarness to them I am not accustomed to.”

“I know. Nobody seems to have been involved personally, they were all like, manning the guns or working in the kitchen when everything went down. And since when have you known a pirate not to brag?”

“Never,” Li-Cha answered. She offered Hals an ale, and together they leaned.

She surveyed the party that was happening around her, feeling oddly detached. The pain of her injuries throbbed, trying to draw her attention. She hadn’t slept, she’d been shot at, fallen out of a window, and walked half the length of Adumon Station, while it snowed, and she was ready for bed.

“Screw it. I’m more tired than curious. I’m going to sleep.”

“Where?” Li-Cha asked.

The weight of that question hung in the air between them. Hals stared into Li-Cha’s purple eyes and felt her face heat up. She stuttered a response.

“I’ll go to Asendor’s place, kick that kid out of the cot maybe. I’ll… see you tonight at the Lament. Maybe we can get some answers there.”

“You’re welcome at mine,” Li-Cha said quietly. 

“I don’t want to interrupt your investigation,” Hals said, trying to make a joke out of it. She and Li-Cha looked at each other, an unspoken thing passing between them. Whatever had happened in the bathroom had passed, at least for now. Hals was too tired and hurt to think of anything but rest now.

“Okay. See you at the Lament.”

Hals had everything she valued on her person at the moment, and the streets were filled with pirates and thieves. She decided it was worth hiring a skimmer to take her to Asendor’s, even though she didn’t really have the money for it. She used her legible to hail one and in a few minutes, a single-person craft arrived, banking sharply down out of the air and landing near the edge of Wazishaki Concourse. It disgorged its occupant, a very drunk pirate wrapped in one of Redblink’s flags, and Hals stepped into it. It stank, presumably due to its previous passenger, but she turned the cool air on full and tried not to breathe too deeply.

Once she was seated, the skimmer floated upward and shot through the simulated atmosphere of the station quickly, entering the void of space that existed between the prongs of Adumon Station’s crescents. Before long she was dipping back into the atmosphere of Red Crescent. Flying in straight lines, rather than following the ponderous curves of the station itself, made the journey exceedingly short. 

The skimmer landed and Hals got out, but instead of walking around the building to the back, she rapped on the front door. It was morning, sort of. Asendor wouldn’t be able to blame her too much. But it wasn’t he who opened the door, it was Fifth. She didn’t look as small and scared now that she had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a steaming cup in her hands. Her blonde hair was damp and no longer braided, and her eyes were a lovely shade of blue that made Hals think of comet ice. It was easier to appreciate them now that she wasn’t terrified.

“Hey, you’re ba– what happened to you?” she asked, giving Hals a once-over.

“Killed most of your former crew,” Hals replied, pushing into the storefront. She looked up to the second floor balcony, but Asendor wasn’t there. She heard clanking from the small kitchenette. Bless him, he was trying to be a good host.

“You did what?” Fifth asked, following her. “Wh-- I don’t-- why?”

Hals ignored her and found Asendor in the kitchen. She poured herself some tea and leaned against the counter, watching him putter. It was sweet, really.

“You look rough,” he said without looking up. “They find you?”

“They did. I walked away, they didn’t. But I’ve got no place to stay. At least, nowhere that’s not full of laser holes.”

“Why did you do that?” Fifth almost screamed. “They were my friends, my crew! They--”

Hals whirled on her and raised a finger. “Don’t you dare come at me like that. I saved your rotten life, and I kept you from having to go back to daddy. You owe me gratitude, not a blasted guilt trip.” She hadn’t meant to yell, but it felt so unfair to be taken to task for saving someone.

Fifth froze, and her lower lip started to tremble. “They were my friends,” she insisted. This time, Hals tried to be gentle. She reached out to Fifth to hold her hand, but the girl flinched back. Hals didn’t try again.

“No, sweet-thing, they were gonna sell you, ransom you back home. They came to my place to find you because you were a payday to them. And I killed them because they shot at me when I wouldn’t give you up.”

“But…” Fifth trailed off, and tears leaked out, just a few at first. She shook her head angrily. “They told me. The Captain swore he saw something in me, something he wanted to train. He…”

But she seemed to be waking up to reality, because Hals didn’t have to say anything else. Fifth just leaned back against the wall, and then slid down, clutching her cup of tea like it would anchor her to the new world she found herself in. Hals groaned and joined her, her strained muscles protesting. Asendor peeked around the corner out of the kitchen, and when he saw what was happening he returned to the food he was attempting to cook. It started to smell good, like roasting meat and sweet tubers baked in grease and salt. Hals felt her stomach rumble.

“How can you be sure?” Fifth asked after a minute. 

“Overheard them talking when they were tossing my apartment. I was on the roof.”

“Are they, all-?”

“Not all. The youngest kid I didn’t kill, but I did hurt him. And somebody was back at the ship, talking to the rest. So whoever she is, she’s alive too.”

“That was probably Sbarra on the ship,” Fifth said. “She’s second to the Captain. I guess she’s the Captain, now. And the boy was Jul. He was kind to me.”

Another tear fell down her face, and she swiped it away furiously. “Stupid. Everybody wants something. Of course they weren’t--” she cut herself off with a shuddering breath. “I’m glad they’re dead.”

“Well,” Hals said. “Good then.” 

“Food’s up,” Asendor said, leaning around the corner again. “Come and get it.”

There were three plates of some adequately cooked eggs, a fried meat that was making a good attempt at passing as bacon, and potatoes. Hals tore into hers, glad for the warm food and the savory flavor. Fifth didn’t eat much, but she did try to. Asendor ate quietly and watched them both, then cleared his throat.

“So, what will you do now, Fifth? Do you still want to be called that?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I think so. For now. But where can I go?”

“You don’t have to go anywhere,” Asendor said, glancing at Hals. “I’ve been meaning to hire an assistant around the shop. Do you have any skill with mecha assembly, or prosthetics growth?”

“I don’t have any skills,” Fifth said sadly. “I can’t believe I thought that the crew of the Esposs saw something special in me. I’m just a rich brat trying to outrun her obligations. I didn’t even finish studying at university.”

Asendor grunted. “You seem like a quick learner though. So long as you don’t mind getting your hands dirty.”

“That, at least, I can do,” she said, glancing at her fingertips. She’d showered and Asendor had given her some of his clothes to wear, so she looked much less out of place than she had before in her grubby finery. She looked like a working woman. She could blend in and disappear.

“Who was it flying that planet crusher?” Fifth asked, changing the subject.

“He’s one of the Flagged Lords, name of Ilum Redblink. Heard of him?” Hals asked.

“Flagged? And no, I haven’t.”

Hals blinked rapidly, trying not to laugh. Fifth truly knew nothing.

“There’s plenty of pirates, and scavengers, and spacers in the world that don’t fly for anybody but themselves. They often have logos, or mottos, or even actual flags. But the Flagged Lords are the pirates who own massive swaths of space, dozens of crews and ships. Their flags are the ones everybody recognizes, markers of status and they offer protection, to a degree. Fire upon a Flagged ship and you’ve made an enemy of every other one. They’re basically admirals, or kings, and any pirate that isn’t under one of their banners is called Flagless.”

“The Golden Esposs had a flag, but it was just an egg with a star.”

“Not one of the Flagged,” Hals confirmed. “There’s four, currently.” She pulled out her legible and started pulling up images of the flags from the local network.

“Redblink’s is this; jawless skull and crossbones with red eyes. He’s got synthetic irises. Rumor is he stared into a black hole too long and lost his eyes.”

“I heard he stared into an exploding sun to learn the secrets of navigating Neverspace, Asendor said. Hals shrugged. 

“Pirate stories are all like that, though. A hundred explanations, and usually none of them is worth the air it cost to speak them.”

“Who are the other Flagged Lords?”

“There’s Jonox Hean. Used to be a man, till he got an addiction to synthetic surgeries. Nobody’s sure how much of him is human, now,” Asendor said. Hals pulled up his flag: a skeletal looking mecha hand, and a hovering key above it. “Most of his pirates are augmented, like me or Hals,” he said. Then he breathed in sharply, glancing at her. Fifth didn’t seem to notice.

“The other two are Lurien Alabrig, and Bulkhead. Bulkhead is a monster, kills anybody not under his protection. The other three Lords have a truce together, but not him,” Hals said. She showed Fifth his flag: a bloody set of silver teeth on a red background. “You ever see that flag, you burn fuel in the opposite direction,” Asendor said.

“Lurien is actually a former Admiral from the Centurium,” Hals continued. “Defected with a dozen experimental, high-power ships. Nobody knows why. His symbol is the Centurium heart and leaf, but upside-down and with a big slash through it.”

“And Redblink stole a planet crusher,” Hals said. “And no one seems to know how.”

“It’s called the Silver’s Culling,” Asendor said. “After it appeared I looked her up, to see if there was news of a ship that size going missing. There’s not; but Silver’s Culling was deployed only a few systems away according to the reports I could find. It was the closest one. Sent to the planet Lingoorar for pacification. Sounds like it never made it there.”

“Good,” Hals said firmly.

“Seconded. How Redblink got it, I’d love to know though,” Asendor said. “Those ships can have fifty thousand people on them if they’re fully equipped. Basically a floating battle station fused with a moon.”

Fifth was staring at the empty cup in her hands, so Hals took it and filled it again. Asendor wasn’t much of a cook, but he always had an excellent collection of tea on hand. She warmed up her mug as well. She was starting to feel drowsy from the food and the warmth. She sighed contentedly.

“I suppose you want to stay here,” Asendor said. “But if I’m housing Fifth too, I’ll need to go buy another cot.”

“I just need to sleep here for a few hours. I’ll stay with Li-Cha.”

“It’s no trouble,” Asendor said. “Cots are cheap. Maybe I should invest in a guest bedroom.”

“You’d have to clear out that junk room upstairs,” Hals said. “That’d take a year, and I need to sleep before then.”

“What do you want from me?” Fifth broke in. Both Asendor and Hals turned to her. She hadn’t looked up from her cup, but she was clenching it firmly, and her voice had a hard edge to it.

“What?”

“You saved me, but everybody wants something. I can see that now. So what is it? You want the reward for yourselves, maybe? Well I’m not going back!” She shouted that last part, sloshing some tea on her hand and then swearing.

“It’s hot,” Hals warned. Fifth stuck her burned fingertips in her mouth, looking considerably less fearless now. She was blushing.

“One of the things that makes rules true is the thing that breaks them. Hals breaks most rules,” Asendor said. “She’s not trying to get anything out of you.”

“Bullshit,” Fifth said, looking from one to the other.

“Now me? I’d like you to work around the shop, if you’re going to stay here, at least until you get on your feet. But Hals, she just collects lost souls like you and I. I think she’s secretly building a menagerie, but I haven’t been able to prove it.”

Hals gave him a gentle punch, and he smiled warmly. “She’s a good person.”

“When I’m not shooting people because they ruined my evening by breaking into my home,” Hals pointed out. “Good is relative.”

“You’re good to me, and to her,” he said, pointing at Fifth. “That’s enough.”

Hals shrugged. This was an argument she could win if she told Asendor her life’s story, but she didn’t particularly want to. She glanced at Fifth, who was trying to look fierce, still.

“Sweet-thing, if I did want something of you, it would be that you’d stop treating yourself like a damn damsel. You’re a capable woman, and a pirate. Nobody’s coming to save you. Act like it.”

Fifth opened her mouth, but closed it again without speaking. She looked worried.

“I don’t know how to fight, or fly a spaceship, or fix things,” she said. “I studied art in school. Literature.”

“Maybe you can be a skaald, and write pirate shanties,” Asendor said. “Can you sing?”

“A little,” she admitted.

“Well taverns are often looking for serving girls who can carry a tune. Maybe you could try that. That’s what I did,” Hals said. “Started working as a serving wench. Never really stopped, come to think of it.”

Fifth grimaced. “I don’t like that word. It’s demeaning.”

“It is, unless you choose it for yourself,” Hals said. “If you’re the one who puts it on you, when others try to make it hurt you, it doesn’t. ‘Cause you chose it for yourself.”

Asendor was quiet at this, but he did give Hals a long look. She just smiled at him.

“Anyway, I’m exhausted. I’m taking the cot. Do whatever you want, it’s your life. But I’d recommend sticking around. Not everybody on this station is as friendly as us,” Hals said. She saluted Asendor with her mug of tea and wandered through the kitchen and into the back room, where the messy cot lay. Fifth still had the blanket around her shoulders, but Hals was tired enough not to care. She collapsed and fell asleep in seconds.

The Wench– Ch. 4: Silver's Culling

Chapter 4 – Silver’s Culling

Hals took about an hour to get to Li-Cha’s place, an elegant little pod on the Green Crescent limb of the station. If she hadn’t been injured from her fall it would have been a lovely brisk walk through the most beautiful part of the station; but as it was, she hated every inch of distance she had to travel. This was where all the plants grew and the food was produced, and it was also the only place with actual walkable parks. It was where everybody wanted to live; and how Li-Cha managed to afford even a tiny place here was beyond guessing. Or at least, it wasn’t polite to guess.

Despite it being well into the station’s night cycle, the flow of ships into and out of the space around the various crescents and their long, protruding piers was still steady. While in theory Adumon Station could have any day/night cycle it wanted, like most it stuck to the standard 25 hour day the core planets used. In space, most ships used a similar split to help crew sleep and stay consistent with whatever port they’d be docking with next. But Flagless pirates weren’t known for keeping the usual hours. 

Hals finally made it to Li-Cha’s street. She’d been hiding her ZSO-1 in her jacket as she walked, but the butt of it still stuck out enough to make people who saw give her a wide berth. This wasn’t the dangerous part of the station; this was where security guards were employed to keep rabble like her out. And she was lucky not to have run into any of them.

She pinged the bell to Li-Cha’s living pod. It was an upscale version of her own apartment, all curving edges and graceful slopes instead of cheap metal panels and durable but ugly building materials. Li-Cha wasn’t working the graveyard shift that night, which was why she opened the door by the third ring. She was still dressed in her serving outfit. She’d probably only gotten home an hour ago.

“Hals?” she asked. She took in the bloody clothes, obvious weapon, and exhaustion and pain in a single glance. “Come inside at once. You’ll scare the neighbors,” she said.

“Already have. I think I was getting tailed by a security drone or two.”

“Whose blood is that?” Li-Cha asked. She swept Hals through her tiny living room and into the bathroom, and started to undress her at once. Hals thought about protesting for modesty’s sake, but she was too damn tired; and the Maiden’s Lament uniform slid off easily enough. 

“It’s a Flagless spacer’s. Fifth, the girl from the bar. Her crew came looking for her.”

“And so you shot them?”

“They tore up my apartment trying to find her. They’re kidnappers; she thinks she’s off on a wild adventure, but they’re ransoming her back to her papa. She’s a paycheck to them, and when she went missing, they came hunting.”

“Where is she now?” Li-Cha started her shower and stuck a hand in to test the temperature, taking it back out quickly and wincing. “Damn heater never works,” she said.

“Asendor’s keeping her for me,” Hals said. “I should have stayed there, but.”

“But you had to collect your things, I see,” Li-Cha said, tapping the bag with her toe. “Hope it’s full of stolen jewels, for your sake.”

“No,” Hals sighed. “It’s not. I have a little reyfinite I got a while back, but that’s supposed to be for when I really need it. Emergencies.”

“And you would call showing up to my home in the darkest hours of night, what, pray tell?”

Hals sighed again. “Yeah.” 

She waited a moment to see if Li-Cha would leave her to her shower. When she didn’t, Hals started to strip her underthings off. Li-Cha watched her unapologetically.

“You’ve got a lot of bruises,” she said, as Hals stepped into the shower. “And a full set of deflector nodes. And… scars.”

“Like tattoos, but with better stories,” Hals said, trying to smile. The water wasn’t very warm, but compared to the temperatures outside, it felt great. She sighed and stepped in, enjoying the slowly warming water. Li-Cha sat against the floor, her hands twisted into a tight knot.

“Look, I know we keep things light, try not to pry into the past,” Li-Cha said. “But Hals, this is….”

The water heater must have decided to start working, because the water started to feel magnificent to Hals, and the room started to fill with steam. She hadn’t realized how cold she’d become, traipsing around the station in the snow. She looked down at herself, at the small trickle of red that was rinsing off of her skin and skating around the drain, at the fresh bruises on her side and knees. And at the scars that covered her body; the blaster burns on her right leg, and the strangely smooth skin covering her left. Grown by Asendor himself over her prosthetic. She prodded at the puffy puncture scar where she’d been stabbed in the stomach. 

“Hals,” Li-Cha said, slightly insistently. “This isn’t something we can avoid.”

“Go ahead and ask,” Hals said, grabbing for the shampoo and working it into her hair vigorously.

“Okay; your nodes. You’ve got a full complement, unless I miss my guess, which means you might have been military. And you’ve got a ring shield that’s way nicer than the one you usually sport at work, I notice. So space corps? But that doesn’t feel right.”

Hals gestured for her to keep going.

“You couldn’t afford that kind of hardware; hells, you wouldn’t need it unless you did a job that was really, really dangerous,” Li-Cha said. 

“Excellent deductions so far,” Hals said. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the tension leaving her muscles. She felt safe, and warm. It was nice, and a little strange given what had just happened to her.

“And you’re comfortable dealing death. That’s not unusual, here, but…. But the way you talked about it… I shot a mugger last year and had nightmares for months.”

“I remember that,” Hals said quietly. 

“So if you weren’t a soldier, you must have been a pirate of some kind. Maybe a bounty hunter, but I don’t know why you’d quit that life if you were. Bounty hunters at least have a good reputation in the Core, don’t get arrested on sight. Pirates, on the other hand….”

“Right,” Hals said. For a long time, there was nothing but the sound of the shower. Hals eventually turned it off, and Li-Cha passed her a big, fluffy towel. She wrapped herself in it gratefully and stepped out. Li-Cha was staring at her, tapping a manicured finger against her lower lip. 

“Why’d you stop?” Li-Cha asked.

“Stop?”

“Flying around with a crew. Pirating.”

Hals let a big sigh out. “They all died. I got scooped up in an escape pod by some of the Mad King’s privateers, and soon after I landed here.”

Li-Cha’s mouth opened in surprise, but she closed it without a word. Her purple eyes seemed to be drinking Hals in. Heat rose in her cheeks, and Hals turned to her reflection in the steamed over mirror. She wiped it clear and took a look at herself. 

“I look like I did back then,” Hals said quietly. “Not just the wounds, the bruises. But, I look thin. Stretched. Like there’s not enough of me to fill up this body.”

Li-Cha hopped up and slid behind her to look, too. 

“You look like you need a lie down,” she said. She put her hands on Hals’ shoulders and gave them a tentative rub. Hals closed her eyes and sighed. The tension her muscles had built up since finding Fifth finally started to release. She was acutely aware that Li-Cha’s body was pressing against her as she started to massage her shoulders.

“When you left work, I figured you were just saving another stray. Like that blind pirate who needed his eyes fixed, or when you got whats-her-name a job at Pennikin’s House, so she could stop selling her body mods to pay for rent. She was missing a bunch of fingers and her nose, right?”

“Her name was Thyst,” Hals said. Li-Cha continued to work on Hals, pulling her towel down so she could keep rubbing her back. Her fingers traced around the deflector nodes along Hals’s spine, which made her shiver. Heat was rising in her that had nothing to do with the steam in the room.

“Why’d you come to me, and not back to Asendor?”

“I worried they might follow me.”

“You killed them all, hon.”

“I let one go. A kid.”

Li-Cha nodded. “So you wouldn’t want them to come to Asendor’s place, but leading them here was okay?”

Hals shook her head. “No, I meant that, only– look, it’s that there’s guards here, and–”

Li-Cha gave Hals a little squeeze. “I’m teasing. But you did scare me.”

“I scared me too, tonight. The fighting, the death... I thought I put all that behind me,” Hals said. “Easy, Li-Cha. It was easy.”

“Our old lives aren’t as far away as we think,” Li-Cha murmured. Her voice was low, and her fingers found the tops of Hals’s hips. Li-Cha started to work her thumbs into Hals’ lower back, making small circles that felt heavenly. Hals let out a tiny groan and leaned against the sink to take the weight off her legs. Li-Cha got closer, her lips almost-not-quite touching Hals’s ear.

“I’m not sure about what else you see in that mirror, but you don’t seem stretched out to me, or too thin. Your body is…” 

Hals flushed and made eye contact with Li-Cha in the mirror. The taller woman was staring at her, her purple eyes almost drawing Hals into them. She was acutely aware that the towel was no longer around her at all; she’d let it drop to the floor. And Li-Cha’s hands were still on her hips, making little circles, getting tighter and lower.

“Li-Cha,” Hals said in a low voice. “Should--”

The room shook violently, and someone screamed outside. Hals moved at the same time as Li-Cha, both of them reaching for the little bathroom door; Hals pausing briefly to scoop some clothes out of her emergency bag. She grabbed her ZSO-1 as well, just in case. Li-Cha ran to the living room and they heard another scream, this time a man, then several folks shouting. The distant bark of laser cannon fire echoed. A ship was shooting close enough to the atmosphere that they could hear it. That was bad news.

“What in the hells is that?” Li-Cha asked. Hals finished dressing and ran to join her in the living room. Had the Flagless managed to follow her? Maybe that young one had gotten back to his new commander, and they were here…

Hals stopped short, staring out Li-Cha’s primly decorated bay window at the sky above Adumon Station. There was a ship floating in the space between the four tips of the station’s docking crescents, and it was larger than any she’d ever seen. It looked like an asteroid had popped into existence in the space where ships typically flew, except it was a matte blue and white, and covered in dozens of docking bays, gun turrets, and various other protruding bits that looked very threatening. Deep sockets all along the ship’s face held the fading glow of a propulsion system, a Neverspace rift generator the size of which Hals did not even know could exist. 

Whatever this ship was, it could only have been built in the Core. Which could only mean one thing: it was a ship from the Centurium, and it was here to wipe them out. As she watched, laser blasts from various Flagless pirate ships started to pepper the huge vessel. They were flinging pebbles at a giant. Their blasts twinkled against the giant ship’s shields without so much as a vacuum explosion or shield spark.. Hals felt her stomach heave. They were in deep shit.

“We gotta go, now,” Li-Cha said. 

Hals’ mind started to spin. She needed to get to Asendor, grab him and Fifth, get onto a ship somehow before the soldiers on that craft took the station over completely, and…

She stopped.

“How’d they know where we are?” she asked.

“Who the hells cares?” Li-Cha asked. “Help me pack, we need to get out of here. I’ve got enough saved--we should be able to buy passage on a ship. If not, you can shoot our way on. But I’m sure as shit not--

“No, listen to me,” Hals said. “Adumon is on the move constantly so this kind of thing can’t happen. Somebody popping out of Neverspace in her blind spot, so the defenses are useless? The odds of that are… impossible.”

“Clearly not, Hals!” Li-Cha said, waving her hands wildly at the dozens of blasts that were now sparking against the Centurium ship. “As soon as that thing opens fire, we’re absolutely screwed, so–”

Hals heard her legible crackle to life, and at the same time, the viewing screen Li-Cha had in her living room did the same. Both of them displayed static and a loud hiss, which quickly resolved into a shouting man.

“-mn you, get this working now!” 

A distant voice replied in the affirmative, and the picture got clearer. It was someone Hals recognized. Not a Centurium admiral, but one of the Flagged pirate lords: Ilum Redblink.

“You Flagless pisspots quit shooting at my ship, and quit panicking too!” Redblink barked. “I’m in command of this vessel, not some scummy Core pilot. How the hells else do you think I was able to land it here, right here? I thought some of you would be smart enough to figure it out.” 

The person off screen spoke again, and Redblink turned his signature synthetic eyes right to the camera and leaned close. He grinned slowly, a menacing, inviting smile that promised mischief and mayhem both.

“Don’t you want to celebrate with me, and me crew? We’ve nabbed a planet crusher, right from the noses of the Centurium! So come greet us!”

He barked a laugh, and the picture faded out. Li-Cha and Hals were frozen, staring at the viewing screen. Li-Cha had grabbed a few data nodes that held pictures and videos of her older brother and started to stuff them into Hals’ bag, but now she stood slack-jawed. Hals knew how she felt.

“So we’re not all going to die,” she said.

“Probably not today,” Hals said.

“But how’d he capture a ship like that? How’d he manage it?”

“I suppose we’ll have to ask,” Hals said. “Bet the pirates are eager to get off the ship and tell the tale.”

They stood still for a moment, just looking at each other. And then they turned and ran toward the door. A ship the size of the one that Redblink had just arrived in was large enough to warrant the use of three of the four biggest docking piers the station had. Even as Hals and Li-Cha ran toward the nearest one, they could see it, and the other two, extending and anchoring with the huge spherical ship. Hals and Li-Cha weren’t the only ones headed for the piers. Anyone who’d been awake when the announcement was made, and most who were woken up by it, seemed to be filling the streets. Some were bleary eyed and wearing their pyjamas, while others looked like they’d just gotten off of work. A wave of people were moving toward the docking pier now, and Hals and Li-Cha got there just as the final pneumatic hiss completed syncing the artificial gravity of the extendable gangway. The doors on the massive ship snapped open, and at once, pirates spilled out.

They were uproarious, cheering and brandishing their weapons. Many were wearing treasures of gold reyfinite, traxium, and shimmering starglass, and their fists were full of O-marks and other coins. A few tossed handfuls of money at the crowd, and people started cheering, screaming questions, shouting congratulations. All at once, Redblink’s pirates were among them, and there was revelry on a scale Hals hadn’t seen in years. The tide of pirates swept away from the ship and onto the main concourse of Green Crescent, where an impromptu parade started. The bleary stragglers were surprised to encounter a tide of jubilant pirates, a few of whom had started to wave the flag of Redblink, a jawless skull and crossbones with a pair of glowing red eyes.

Hals maneuvered next to one of the pirates and grabbed him by the collar. He leaned into her and closed his eyes for a kiss, and she shoved him back. 

“No you idiot, I want to know what happened? How’d he do it? How’d Redblink capture a planet-taker?”

“You’ll have t’give me a peck to find out!” the pirate said lecherously. Hals pushed him off and tried to find someone else who could tell her what happened.

The Wench– Ch. 3: Surprises

IMAGE CREATED USING ADOBE FIREFLY AI

Hals didn’t recognize the woman, which mean she hadn’t been in the bar when the shooting started. Good thing too, or she would have died there; her shields were garbage. The blast from the Gobbler hit her shield and Hals watched it sizzle and her distributor implants glow orange before they failed totally, and the blast zipped through her skull. The woman attempted a scream as a neat centimeter hole punched through her temple and down into her torso. Then she collapsed noisily, falling down the stairs. Hals could hear the person on the horn screaming, demanding to know what was happening.

There were shouts from below, and Hals rolled back from the edge of the roof. No blaster bolts flew toward her; they hadn’t seen her. Hals flicked the Gobbler open and checked the power cell. It was cracked, emitting the iconic yellow-pink smoke of a Licane GasBat, but she figured she could probably get three or four shots before it needed to be ejected completely. She didn’t carry a spare; but she rarely needed more than one shot. In this case, she regretted that line of thinking. Hals peered over the corner of the building and tried to get a clear count of her enemies. 

“What happened?” someone shouted from below; a deep voiced man. One, standing out in the open above the fresh corpse. Hals craned her neck.

“Marylin is dead! Someone shot her!” Two; this another man, much younger sounding, from around the corner. Out of sight.

“Who? From where?” A third voice, also around the opposite corner. Fifth had guessed that she had six crew, plus her and the captain. If there was someone back on the ship barking orders, that meant there were at least… five, if they were all here.

“I dunno!” Two again. He shifted into view, and Hals saw a spindly blond mustache and a shaky hand holding a too-large knife.

“Up there, the roof!” Four. And, whoops.

Hals rolled back, barely avoiding laser fire. For a few seconds all she heard was the hiss-snap of burning metal, punctuated with purple flashes that lit up the side of the building and flew over the roof. The glows told her a lot about what kind of weapons the pirates were packing. Red lasers were fast and packed less of a punch, while blue lasers were high power and typically slower than their redder cousins. Purple was somewhere in the middle. Something to do with the spectrum of light, a pirate had once told her. While her shield wasn’t cheap, it probably wouldn’t last for more than a few seconds against sustained purple laserfire. Which meant it was time for an upgrade.

Hals raised the Gobbler, got her feet under her and hopped off the roof, landing squarely in front of the doorway to her home. As she fell she trusted her instincts and took aim at the human shapes below her, and she squeezed off a pair of shots. Her move had surprised them, but they still managed to shoot back at her, and she felt her ring heat up as it absorbed a blast. The second her heels hit metal Hals rolled back into her apartment, the Gobbler aimed at chest height. She rolled up into a kneeling stance and did a quick sweep, which only took seconds because the place was so tiny.

Nobody in the building, it seemed. They’d tossed her apartment, but missed the important stuff. She ran over to the bed and flipped the mattress off, revealing the very large, very expensive crate wedged underneath. She entered the code quickly, listening for the sound clanging metal that would let her know the pirates were climbing the stairs. She could hear that they were talking, to each other, which was good; it meant she had scared them. She was going to have enough time.

“Whoever the stars you are, we don’t care. We just want the girl. Give her to us, and we’ll walk away.”

Hals unlatched the crate and flipped up the lid. It wasn’t very spacious, maybe a meter long and about as wide as a backpack, but it held everything she treasured in it. Including her very, very expensive shield ring which she slipped on her right middle finger, and her favorite gun. She put the Gobbler away in its secret slot and hefted her pride and joy: an authentic ZSO-1 slug thrower. It was easily three hundred years old; getting ammunition for it was almost impossible, and it was very tricky to fire accurately. She cranked back the loading wheel and slipped a handful of the uranium pellets it fired into the revolving ammo slots, letting the spring-loaded cover slam shut with a satisfying snap. Shielded and armed properly, she felt a whole lot safer.

“Have it your way then,” the man below shouted. Boots clanged on the stairs. Hals took aim.

She didn’t wait to see them to shoot them. She waited until the shadow of somebody’s head crossed in front of the window by the door and unloaded a five round burst straight through the wall. Pellets punched through the thin metal like it wasn’t there at all, and someone screamed. Hals had bought herself a few extra seconds. She pulled a nanobag out of the crate and snapped it open with a flick of her wrist. She quickly stuffed it with everything else the box contained: a crate of pictures, a holy clipping of Pal’tho’s tree her mother had given her, ammunition and emergency nutrient rations, some clothes, and a sackful of raw reyfinite ore she’d been hanging onto for emergencies. The bag properly filled, Hals tapped the ring on her finger and wove it into the shield she was already sporting. She heard the ring chirp twice to inform her it was protecting her, and she took a deep breath. The kind of hardware she was packing would draw eyes and questions, but this was no time to worry about that.

She hoisted the ZSO-1 and set it against her hip, then threw the nanobag around her shoulders. She moved as quietly as she could toward the window furthest from the staircase and peeked out. The alley below was about twenty feet down, and there wasn’t much to break her fall. The bad thing about this apartment was it only had one exit and one entrance, and men with lasers were waiting for her outside. She considered her options. They weren’t great.

Someone will have heard the gunfire and laser blasts, but there wasn’t law enforcement on the station per-se. There were detectives that you could hire, and security forces you and your neighbors could commission to take care of your area; but Hals didn’t have enough money for either of those. The main way people protected themselves was by belonging to a guild or a pirate lord’s flag. If you were a part of one of those groups, you’d be avenged at the very least. But Hals wasn’t. So she was on her own.

She unfolded her legible and stretched it out as long and thin as she could, getting it nearly as long as her arm. She bent it slightly and made sure the camera attachment was on the far end, then she eased it up to the window to take a peek out, curling the legible so it looked around the back side of her building and showed her the pirates.

The three remaining pirates were sheltering in the small square below, taking cover behind trash bins and an old, out-of-order crate hauler that had been rusting there for as long as Hals had lived in the apartment. The woman she’d shot was slumped at the bottom of the stairs, and the man she’d caught with the Z was almost cut in half. His top half was slumped halfway over the railing, and below that was nothing but dripping gore. Hals grimaced a bit at the sight of the man. The Z was a great weapon, but it was messy.

“What do we do?” she heard the young mustachioed man ask. Hals adjusted her legible to be sure of the angle, then took careful aim through the floor of her apartment. It was the same cheap metal as the walls, and wouldn’t do anything to stop her next shot. She would have to aim carefully, though. She had the clearest shot at the big man who seemed to have taken charge after the gravelly woman had died. He was using a thin walled garbage disintegrator for cover. She lined up her shot and a rush of adrenaline pumped through her. She knew it was dumb, but she was angry and she wanted to scare them, so she raised her voice.

“What you do next is die!” she yelled. And her slug thrower barked, another five-shot spread. It shook the whole building as it punched through the floors and into the big man. He collapsed, blood spurting from a crater in his face, and the scream from the young pirate was matched by the sound of screaming metal. Hals realized she’d miscalculated. She’d shot through the floor, yes, but also through the support beam that held this room in place. The floor started to tip, and the sound of groaning metal filled her ears.

“Oh shit,” she said. 

She snatched up the legible and tightened the duffel. Below and beside her, she heard shouting. The pirates, and possibly her neighbors. Hopefully nobody would get hurt from this. Nobody innocent, anyway. The floor sank, metal screeched, and Hals slid toward her half open front door. She did her best to keep her balance, but then the floor lurched and her head cracked against the cheap faux-glass plastic of the window and punched it out of its frame. She nearly followed it as the building tipped again. Light filled the room behind her as the ceiling tore away and let in the glow from the street sim lamps. Hals caught herself on the edge of the window frame, nearly crashing through it.

The two remaining pirates started shooting wildly when they saw her, and her nose ring started to heat up as it dissipated the blasts. The room was now at a 45 degree angle, and she was having trouble staying on her feet. Bolts of red and blue laser fire were evaporating small holes in the walls now as the pirates kept firing. She didn’t have much of a choice; if she was still in here when the building fell totally, she’d be in serious danger. She had to get out. She grabbed her ZSO-1 with both hands, took a deep breath, ran for the door, then jumped. She sailed right through the opening and into empty air. Everything slowed.

Hals was flying sideways, and she’d aimed herself well: she was going to land on top of the trash incinerator. It was better than hitting the road beneath, mostly because it was covered in a small amount of snow and typically a layer of trash too. The third pirate, a bald woman who hadn’t yet spoken was hiding there, and her face was contorted in terror as she watched Hals fly at her. 

But Hals couldn’t worry about her yet; she had to take out the fourth man. As she flew she saw the young pirate, just a kid barely older than Fifth, with blood leaking out of his arm. He wouldn’t be able to get an accurate shot off– no threat. The big pirate though, he was going to be a problem. So as Hals fell, she raised the ZSO-1 to her shoulder and aimed. There was only a moment where the man’s leg crossed her sights, but she didn’t hesitate. She squeezed the trigger, and the blast from her slug thrower tossed her back against the alley wall and she rolled down it, straight onto the incinerator. The landing made her vision flash white, and she felt something crack in her side. She heard movement, but the pain was overwhelming her, so she didn’t bother to aim; she just held the trigger down and waved her weapon in the general direction of the pirate who was hiding beneath her.

A dozen pellets punched out and through the machine, and she heard a thump, then a slump. Hals tried to turn to bring her gun up, but something in her body protested shrilly, the pain making her yelp. She tried again, and managed to slide off the incinerator and onto the body of the lady pirate. Most of her was still there, but her hand and part of her face were missing, the open wound steaming in the chill night air. Hals braced her back against the wall and looked down the alley. A dozen meters away, the big pirate was lying on his side. His left leg was just meat below the knee, and he was holding it and screaming. The boy was nowhere to be found. He’d either been turned into red mist, or more likely he’d legged it.

Hals took a step and slipped in the pooling, hot blood of the first woman she’d killed. She retrieved the dead pirate’s blaster, a double barrel hand cannon, and limped her way to the big man. He was still screaming, but managed to stifle it when he saw her coming. He reached for his weapon, and Hals shot his finger off with her borrowed blaster. His shields were gone, then.

“Who the stars are you?” he wheezed. She glanced around, seeing a few of her neighbors peeking out of their windows. She waved at her favorite neighbor Ms. Dunphey before raising the double-barrel and rested it against the pirate’s skull, and fired unceremoniously. Four down. Just the kid to go, plus whoever was on that ship.

She looked down the street, spotting the frantic footprints of the young pirate in the snow. He must have run as soon as he’d seen his friend get shot. Smart kid. She sighed. She wasn’t going to be able to chase anybody. And she’d killed enough people for one day. She took a minute to collect the rest of the weapons the pirates had brought with them, plus a sack full of O-marks, and, on impulse, the ship’s horn. Then she limped away. Somehow, through all the blasts of lasers and slug throwers, her room had managed to stay standing. Or at least, leaning. She wouldn’t be coming back, but she appreciated it nonetheless. It was well built. That was something.

The Wench– Ch. 2: Asendor

IMAGE CREATED USING ADOBE FIREFLY AI

Asendor Ku’s home was part storefront, part industrial factory, and part livingspace. Hals had helped him find it almost two years ago, after helping him out of a nasty debt he’d incurred down in Red Crescent at the chance houses. Once he’d managed to get his business up and running, he quickly became known as the premiere body-modder on Adumon. It was late enough that he was probably asleep, so Hals used her key and opened his back door, slipping in and waving at the automated defense mecha that guarded the door. It bleeped at her and went back to sleep, sliding its very powerful blaster away quietly. Fifth hadn’t even noticed.

“You live here?” she asked, as Hals flicked the lights of the back room on. This was where Asendor stored his in-progress bits and bobs, and also a cot. “No, I just said that back at the bar to give people the wrong idea. I don’t want anyone looking for you to actually find you,” she said.

“Looking for me?” Fifth said. She was a little droopy now, and Hals found the folding cot beneath a pile of prosthetic arms that hadn’t had flesh grown over them yet. She picked them up and dumped them to the side, then unfolded the cot and brushed it off. There was a little oil stain on the corner of the blanket, but it’d do. 

“Just take a lie down here, okay Fifth?” Hals said. “I’ll talk to Asendor and get things sorted. We’ll chat in the morning.”

“So you’re not staying with me?” the girl said, a little quaver in her voice. Hals sat on the edge of the cot and patted it, gesturing for Fifth to join her. The young pup did so, even going so far as to take her hand. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said firmly. “I just need to talk to Asendor. I’ll be back down in a few minutes, and I’ll be here after you wake up too. Okay?”

“I’m really in trouble,” Fifth said. Her eyes were partially closed now, which meant the pick-me-up was probably wearing off. She’d be asleep in minutes. She stretched out on the little cot and put her head in Hals’ lap, sighing. Hals went rigid, her hands raised slightly. Fifth didn’t seem to notice her face was pressed into a metal leg.

“I think I made a mistake, coming out here,” Fifth said sleepily. “But I’m glad I met someone kind. Not many people are kind, to me. Not anymore.” She yawned, and that was that. She was asleep. 

“What in the name of space have you brought me this time, Halsirena?” a voice from the doorway said.

“Hello, Asendor,” she said back. “Brought you a stray.”

“I can see that,” he said, yawning. “Woke me up from a lovely dream, too.”

“Lovelier than two women in your bed?” Hals asked, gently shifting Fifth to the side and then putting the dingy pillow under her head. The girl snored on, unaware.

“Yes, in fact,” Asendor pouted. “I had just devised a way to trick core planet DNA sensors, and was going to make enough money to buy this entire station.”

“That does sound nice,” Hals said. “Let's talk elsewhere, hmm?”

Asendor let out a slightly mechanical sigh and waved her forward. He was older, he’d seen about fifty Core years, and aside from a bright blue cybernetic eye he looked relatively unremarkable. That was a testament to his skill and craft, however; the entire left side of his body from his neck down was prosthetic. Every time someone asked how it happened, he’d invent a new story. Hals didn’t think she’d heard the truth of it yet, and wasn’t sure she ever would. Asendor walked her through the storefront and unlocked the door to the stairs, and brought her up to his living quarters. Once inside, he flopped back onto his bed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Okay Halsirena, what’s the story this time?”

“That girl was kidnapped by a pirate crew on a ship called the Gilded Esposs. The captain was in the Maiden’s Lament and got caught cheating at cards, and somebody gutted him. Fifth, the girl down there, started to freak out, so I--”

“Took her under your wing, like you do to all of us pathetic fools, yes, I know that part,” Asendor said.

Hals grinned at him. “You didn’t seem to mind it much when it was your pathetic ass I was helping,” she pointed out. 

“Obviously not,” Asendor said grumpily. “I’m a selfish bastard.”

“You’ve been talking about hiring an assistant.”

Asendor stuttered a few times, his eyes snapping open. “Her! You don’t even know-- and what are her qualifications? And what if they come looking for her, this crew you mentioned? If she’s worth money to them, they’ll--”

Hals sighed and sat on the corner of the tinkerer’s desk. “I’ll take care of it,” she said. “Nobody will be looking for her by tomorrow night.”

Asendor grimaced. “This is not ideal,” he said.

“You do owe me,” Hals pointed out quietly.”

“Hals,” Asendor sighed. “You know you don’t need to make this about owing, or debts. I’ll help because you are my friend. No need to call in a favor. You’ve got an unlimited stash of credit with me.”

He said it so casually that Hals thought for a moment he was joking. When it was clear he wasn’t, a lump formed in her throat.

“I didn’t, um--”

“You really think I’d refuse you anything?” he said. He just looked tired now. “After what you did for me?”

“I just--”

Asendor waved a hand, cutting her off. “You’re unbelievable, my friend. Do you want to stay the night here?”

“No,” Hals said. “I need to go home, just in case someone comes looking for her. That’s where they’ll expect her to be. But I’ll come back in the morning to talk to her. She was out of it, I don’t think she knows she was going to be ransomed back to her family by that crew.”

“And you know that for certain?”

“I’ve seen it before,” Hals said. “It’s a pretty common job, honestly. I’m just surprised they took her to a spaceport before turning her back over to her family for the ransom.”

“Pirates are stupid,” Asendor said, then yawned. “Let me go back to sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“May Pal’tho bless your dreams,” Hals said, giving him a tiny bow.

“Same to you. Go out the back door, please.” Asendor waved his hand and the lights in the room dimmed. Hals felt her way down the stairs and back out into the alley, stopping only to more fully cover Fifth in the blanket that had slipped off her shoulders.

Hals lived at the cheap edge of Red Crescent, all the way on the other side of the station. And of course, it had started to snow. She sighed and started to walk, cursing the triplets who ran the station, the Wazishakis. They were from a planet that celebrated a particular holiday around this time on the Core calendar, and to make it festive for everyone, they’d mined a comet so the weather simulators could make it snow. Hals shivered as the first few flakes began to touch her neck and considered ordering a ride. Walking to the other side of the station at night through the stuttering snowfall wasn’t going to be enjoyable. Hals pulled out her legible and stretched it until it was big enough to cover her forearm. The thin, elastic screen booted up fitfully; she really needed to save up for a new one. She checked the balance of O-marks in her account and sighed. If a new legible was in her future soon, she was going to have to walk.

She started trekking toward her place along the gentle curve of the crescent. The long walk was brisk and chilled her, but it was also refreshing. Even late at what accounted for night on the station, she passed hundreds of people along the main crescent roads. Most of them lived on Adumon Station, and were hawking their wares to the crewmates that were on station-leave. It was an odd mix of people, altogether. Everybody here had some reason to be avoiding the core planets or other more civilized lands. Even among Flagless ports, Adumon had a reputation for savagery, which was rightly earned. Hals noticed at least two bodies in gutters as she walked home. They’d be cleaned up by the tidying mecha in the morning, but for now they were collecting snow.

It took the better part of half an hour before she made it over into Red, and she started to weave her way through the alleys and side streets to get to her little apartment. It was on the second floor of a two-story living box that had been dropped off here by some enterprising soul when the station had been new. Once these were nice places to live, and now they were affordable. Hals had managed to get the apartment on the end, which meant she only had one noisy neighbor to deal with. She felt relief just seeing her building; she was nearly home. And then a tickle along the back of her neck warned her to be careful. She slowed her gait and took stock of what she could see, trusting her instincts. And sure enough, someone was crouched under the stairs of her place. She squinted. Several someones.

Hals couldn’t hide, she was in the middle of the street and in clear view, so she just kept walking past her place, her heart pounding, trying not to look suspicious. As carefully as she could, she looked out the corner of her eye to try and figure out who it was. Just some junkie trying to avoid the snow? No, that would be too convenient. It was probably Fifth’s crew. How had they known where she lived?

Hals hurried along past her building and down a few more blocks just to be safe. No one followed her, and she quickly got to the end of the street and turned down another alley, and then another. Finally she stopped, trembling. She hadn’t expected the crew of the Gilded Esposs to find her so quickly. Or at all, if she was being honest with herself. They’d probably already broken down the door, realized she wasn’t home, and then decided to wait until she arrived. How long they’d wait was the question. Hals had her blaster-- no sane person would walk around the station without a weapon– but she wasn’t sure she could kill all of the crew hunting after Fifth before they got her, too. There were supposed to be six of them, now that the captain was dead.

Hals sighed and looked up, past the dirty alley walls and falling snow to the stars beyond. Adumon Station was floating somewhere outside the Kor nebula on the edge of what most people considered civilized space, which meant Hals had an amazing view of swirling clouds of gas and the little glowing blips as craft jumped into and out of Neverspace. She could probably get work on one of those smaller ships. They usually needed capable hands, willing to get into an engine and clean it, or tear down and repair old equipment. She was good with her hands. She could just leave.

But she had a life here, at least as much of one as she could manage. And she wasn’t going to give that up because of six assholes who wanted to kidnap a kid for ransom. She nodded, and started looking for a ladder.

Up on the roof of a three story habitation unit about a block away from her place, Hals had a pretty good view of the haphazard roads that made up this section of Red Crescent. She took a deep breath. It was very cold up here, and the snowfall was actually starting to accumulate. This was going to be dangerous. She grinned. And fun.

She ran and leapt for the nearest building. For a very brief moment, she was soaring and the gap between habitations loomed, ready to gobble her up and add her body to those being cleaned in the simulated morning light. And then she was across, skidding to a stop on the next building over with preternatural grace. Sometimes, having a prosthetic leg custom built by Asendor had its advantages.

It took her less than a minute to get to her own building’s roof, which had a shallow slant leaning toward Red crescent’s tip. The snowfall had abated; presumably the weather drones were out of excess water vapor, or the frigid conditions for snow were too difficult for the atmo regulator to keep up for very long. There was still snow on the roof though, a thin layer of it, so Hals was careful to step along the metallic roof’s bolts for the extra purchase they offered. She got to the side of the building where the stairs were and hunkered down. She heard voices in her apartment.

“-actly how long?” A stony, female voice asked.

“Long as it takes till you find the girl,” a second voice replied. This one was tinny, sounding vaguely robotic; probably speaking through a legible or similar device. “She’s worth more than our ship; we can’t just lose her to some floozy looking for a good roll.”

“I know. Without the Captain around though, how we gonna ransom her?”

“Leave that to me,” the person speaking through the communicator said. “You sure you got the right place?”

“It’s where we got led,” replied the woman tersely. “We jumped a guy as he was leaving that bar, and he knew the wench Fifth left with. Said he saw her makin’ moves on Fifth, and this is where she’s supposed to live.”

“But she ‘ent there,” the voice asked.

“Nuh.”

“Maybe you got lied to.”

There was silence. Hals leaned a little closer to the edge and peeked an eye over. The woman was almost directly below her, talking into something that looked like a wrapped up scroll. Unless she missed her guess, it was a ship’s horn, one of a set of devices all programmed to be able to hail the vessel at a moment’s notice. Hals slid her hand into her jacket and found the hidden pocket that concealed her weapon, easing it out as quietly as she could. She carried a simple weapon, little more than a barrel, a power core and a trigger. It wasn’t accurate over anything more than a few meters, and it chewed through power cores because it overdrew. She called it the Gobbler, and that last feature was exactly why Hals picked it.

“Maybe you need to go find that guy and ask again,” the voice said over the horn. The woman below Hals rolled her eyes, and for a brief moment, they made eye contact. She froze, and Hals swung the Gobbler around and aimed straight into the crown of the woman’s head. 

The Wench– Ch. 1: Finding Fifth

Chapter One: Finding Fifth

by Lucas X. Wiseman

---

IMAGE CREATED USING ADOBE FIREFLY

Halsirena hated it when gunfights broke out at the end of her shift. It was winter, or as near enough as the spaceport’s weather generator could make it seem, and winter was usually when the most rowdy Flagless ships made port. And that often meant Hals spent the last hour of her workday cleaning up scorch marks and blood. 

A hoarse voice shouted: “Yer a cheater and a scoundrel!” which was the only warning Hals got before blaster bolts started to sizzle the air inside the Maiden’s Lament. She was no fool; even when she was working she wore her deflector ring-- pierced through her nose, instead of on an ear or on a finger like most spacefolk chose. And good thing too, because one of the wayward blasts knocked her on her ass as the two trawlers drew down on each other and started shooting. Hals stayed on the ground and sighed as more bolts of laser fire flew overhead. She was so close to going home, too. Her ring heated up slightly as it absorbed the blast-- it was synced with a few dozen different pin-sized implants across her body designed to distribute the energy and heat of a bolt and dissipate it, but it still got a little hot when she got shot.

Next to her, a young and frightened looking patron had dropped to the floor too. She’d been on the way back from the privy, and looked absolutely terrified; the whites of her eyes shining bright against the barely clean floorboards of the Lament. The two scoundrels shooting up the place had a few buddies with them, who joined in the battle. It wasn’t an even fight, the accused cheater only had two of his crew, while the other man had four cohorts fighting with him. In a few seconds the cheater’s shields would be overwhelmed and the fighting would be over. But it appeared the cheater had shields of a decent potency, so the other side swapped from blasting uselessly pulling out knives. People were either watching and cheering, sprinting out of the bar, or trying to ignore things best they could. Hals took pity on the young pup next to her.

“You know, this isn’t uncommon. Card cheating, usually-- or somebody stole from somebody’s mother’s uncle’s ship 20 years ago, or… well, there’s usually a reason, but not always.”

“This happens often?” the girl said, her voice a horrified squeak.

“Weekly,” Hals sighed. “I was almost off, too. You doin’ ok?”

“I mean, I--” there was a big thump and cheers from the middle of the bar. The accused card cheater had finally slumped over, a knife sticking out of the side of his head. His two cronies took one look at each other and scattered, leaving their buddy’s body. Hals sighed. More work for her. Her new friend on the floor gagged as the man died.

“You’re new to all this, huh? First time in a lawless port?” Hals said. Now that there was no danger of getting accidentally blasted, she sat up and brushed herself off, surveying the damage to the Lament. A few broken chairs, but the tables were hardened gossamer steel; it would take more than a small bar brawl to break them. Where the dead man lay, a thick pool of blood was forming. 

“They just killed him,” the young pup said, her voice shaking. 

“You know, shields only work on lasers, not physical objects. Most pirates don’t have slug throwers anymore, for fear of shooting through their own ships and killing themselves. That’s why everybody and their mother carries a blade.” Hals said. She looked at the terrified girl again and took pity on her. “Let me bring you something.”

She got to her feet and helped the quaking would-be pirate into a sheltered corner booth that had been vacated by a trio of pirates who had conveniently forgotten to pay their tab. She scowled, and committed their faces to memory. If they ever came back in, she’d have words for them. And a swift kick in the ass, if they refused to pay up.

She went back to the bar, where Olfadden was. He hadn’t even ducked during the fight; he’d just kept on polishing glasses and pouring drinks. He was a very large man, with dark eyes and big, scarred hands. He was one of the few successful pirates Hals had heard of that had gotten out of the life with a fistful of treasure, and managed to stay out. He’d bought the Maiden’s Lament and fixed it up, turning it into a hub of trade and gossip on Adumon Station. Most of the Flagged pirates who landed on the station made sure to stop into the Lament, which meant everybody else did, too. 

 “I need a pick-me-up, three kinetic ales, and a 50/50 shot,” she rattled off. Getting blasted was no reason to forget the orders she’d taken, after all. 

Olfadden nodded and started pouring worlessly. Across the Lament, Hals caught the eye of Li-Cha, the other serving girl working with her. They both wore the uniform of the Maiden’s Lament, a full-body workman’s overall with the legs cut almost completely off, so their legs and thighs (and almost everything else) were available to be seen. While Hals felt like the uniform made her look like an adolescent girl, Li-Cha managed to make the thing look elegant and sexy. That, combined with her purple core-world eyes, and she was by far the most popular server at the Lament. She zoomed around a table of privateers who displayed the dark blue armmark of the Mad Emperor and winked at Hals.

“Now here I thought you’d dodge out of the way of a blast that slow, ‘stead of getting slapped upside the tit by it,” Li-Cha said with a grin. Hals had noticed her use her serving tray as a shield when the fight broke out, catching a blast on it deftly without seeming to try. She and Li-Cha had known each other for about six months, ever since the other woman started working at the Lament. They had a curious relationship, never really skimming past the surface. Hals wanted to, of course, but Li-Cha always seemed to keep her at an arm’s length. Even when they’d had tea together at her house, she was cordial and friendly, but never more. Hals shook her head.

“Well, I just know how good my shield ring is,” Hals said, tapping her nose. “If I was worried, I might have stepped aside; but neither of those twinkle-eyed gamblers were going to pack anything that could hurt me.”

“I see you’ve got another lost pup under your wing,” Li-Cha said, using her chin to point at the corner booth. She was stacking her tray with food as fast as it arrived in the galley window behind the bar.

“She’s a bit shaken up. I’m just going to give her a pickup.”

“Mmhmm,” Li-Cha said, giving Hals a knowing look. “You can take care of her. I’ll take care of the cleanup. I know you’re almost off, anyway.”

Hals felt a rush of gratitude, then scowled at Li-Cha . “What’s with the charity?”

“I just happen to think it’s delightful you still care,” Li-Cha said. “A guy got dead fifteen feet away from here and you don’t give a coyote’s burp, but you want to take care of that girl. It’s–” Hals waved her hand, cutting Li-Cha off. “And you want my tips, right?”

“And I want your tips,” she confirmed. “Not the ones you’ve already gotten, but anybody you haven’t finished serving. I'll take that,” she said, holding out her hand for the tray Olfadden had stacked with drinks. “Fair trade,” Hals agreed. She gave over the tray, taking the pick-me-up for her new lost puppy, and then reaching behind the bar to get an ale for herself.

“Have fun,” Li-Cha said, almost skipping back into the taproom. Hals glanced at Olfadden, who’d been watching them. 

“I heard it,” he said gruffly. “Enjoy the rest of your night. You’ll pay for any extra drinks you get, but those are on the house.”

“Thanks, Olf,” she said, trying to capture some of the sweetness Li-Cha seemed to exude effortlessly.

He grunted, and Hals found herself sitting across from a young, terrified stranger. Her fear-stricken eyes were still wide, which made their pale blue color even more apparent. Hals didn’t see the tell-tale chip lines, which meant they were probably the peepers she was born with. The girl wore an artful, twisting blonde braid that was impractical for long-term spacetravel. Hals guessed that clothes were once very handsome, but weeks of use had made them grubby and thin. They were not built for the hard work of flying a ship-- more like they were printed for mass production. Any Flagless crew worth their oramite knew durable clothes were just as valuable as a high-quality shield ring. Nobody had seen the sense in telling the young girl, though. Despite her clothes, the girl was comely enough. Hals adjusted the straps of her uniform and then passed the sparking drink across the table.

“Name’s Halsirena, call me Hals,” she said. “You’ll want to pinch your nose when you shoot that. It’ll sting otherwise.”

The girl was staring at the sparking drink with unease. “What is it?”

“Pick-me-up. Most places around here serve one, or something like it. It’s better not to ask what's in it.”

“What does it do?”

“Makes traumatic experiences seem funny,” Hals said. “Up you drink. Pinch, remember.” The young pirate did as she was told, throwing the shot back impressively enough, though she did choke as the last bit of sparks went down her throat.

“What’s your name, kid?” Hals asked. 

“I’m Orianna, and--” her pupils dilated to nearly the full width of her eye, then shrank to the size of a pinprick. She started to giggle. Hals sipped her ale.

“Orianna, huh. That’s a core planet name, I reckon.”

Orianna hiccuped and then gave her head a shake. “No, sorry. My name’s, uh. They’ve been calling me Fifth. On account of, my first night I drank a fi--”

“I see,” Hals said, cutting her off. “So Fifth, you running away from something? Ran recently, if you can’t keep your name straight. What’s got you on a pirate’s ship?”

A pick-me-up happened to make it very hard to lie, but Hals didn’t think Fifth needed to know that just yet. She seemed flustered and a little embarrassed. All concern about the dead man, which Li-Cha had somehow persuaded one of her regular patrons to haul out of the Lament for her, seemed to be gone.

“I’m um. This is my first trip off-planet. My parents wanted me to marry some clod-headed brat to secure some kind of a business merger. I don’t even like her. So, I left.” Hals passed Fifth the rest of her ale, signaling Li-Cha for another. Her drink arrived quickly and her friend deposited it with a smile and a purple-eyed wink. 

“So you are from a core planet. Which one? Ekthellios? Ur-Sing? Maris? How’d you find a Flagless ship there?”

“I um, I just asked around,” she said sheepishly. “Went into the worst looking taverns near the spacedocks and just asked if anybody had work. I got picked up pretty quick.”

Hals felt her stomach clench, and glanced around the Maiden’s Lament to see if anybody here seemed to be with Fifth. Nobody seemed to be looking for her. In fact, there had been an extra empty chair at the card game when the shooting started… 

“Wait, that guy who got stabbed. Was he--”

“He was my captain,” she said sadly. “Said he wanted to keep an eye on me, first time out. I didn’t--- he cheated on the ship, but the crew let him. I guess…” she stared at her drink, swirling it slightly. Her hands were shaking. “Everybody left.”

A yawing pit was opening in Hals’ stomach, and she tried to keep the uneasy feeling from showing on her face.

“So that captain--”

“Captain Pobrownaa,” Fifth said. Her voice had gotten very small.

“Captain Pobrownaa heard you were looking for a way off- planet, and offered you work. Fifth, are your parents rich?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Mom owns about a quarter of the planet, I think. I never really paid attention to the business side of things.”   

“I see,” Hals said evenly. She glanced over at the man who had shot Fifth’s captain, a tubby fellow with a massive scarred hole where one eye should be. He was laughing and back to his game of cards, with a sizable pile of coins in front of him. It appeared nobody was willing to call his bluff anymore. She wondered if he knew he’d just saved a girl from getting kidnapped. Or if he’d care.

Fifth tossed back her head and started to drain the ale like an old pro, putting the entire thing away in a few seconds. She slammed it down with a goofy grin, one pupil fully dilated again.

“How many crew on your ship?” Hals asked. “Was that all of them in here?”

“No, there’s seven, plus a servitor mecha. I guess six, with the captain--”

“And what kind of craft is it?” Hals pressed.

“I don’t know ships,” Fifth said. “But it’s uh, called the Gilded Esposs.”

Hals hadn’t heard of that ship, which meant it was small-time. And with a crew that size, they weren’t exactly going to be bringing an army to look for Fifth. But soon enough, somebody would be coming. Hals made up her mind.

“Alright sweet-thing, we’re going home together,” she said, affecting the kind of loud, sultry voice she’d heard a dozen different working women use over the years. She glanced around the bar again to double-check that a member of the Gilded Esposs’s crew wasn’t here looking for Fifth. Nobody was paying attention to them. 

“Oh, I’m flattered, and you’re cute, but--”

“Come on,” Hals said, dragging Fifth by the hand. The girl stumbled and Hals caught her in what she hoped looked like a lecherous embrace. She couldn’t bring herself to grope the poor girl just for show, but she did her best to look like she was hoping to get lucky tonight. A few patrons glanced at them as they stumbled toward the door together, and Olfadden grunted as she passed. Only Li-Cha seemed to sense that there was something other than lust at work here; she gave Hals a concerned look. 

“Later,” she mouthed, hoping her friend would get the message. 

And then they were outside, in the blustering, simulated atmosphere of Adumon Spaceport. Hals had lived here for almost a decade now, and she still loved the sight of it, especially from outside the Maiden’s Lament. When seen from space, the station looked like a pair of crescent moons merging together at their midsections, a sort of flying, curving X. The outfacing curve of the station was all gun turrets and shield generators, making it a formidable and dangerous enemy to have to battle. 

The opposite side of the station was where Hals was standing and where everybody lived, thousands of souls all surviving together on the skin of the station thanks to artificial gravity and a simulated atmosphere. Hals didn’t even try to understand the science behind how it all worked; she just knew it was beautiful. She doubted Olfadden had realized he’d built his bar near the perfect point along Red Crescent to get a great view of all three of the other crescents, Blue, Silver, and Green. Normally the various docking towers or residential buildings would block your view, but not here. He’d probably just picked this place because it was cheap, and near Red’s main road.

The curves of the four arms were graceful and gentle, and allowed ships as small as single passenger pods and as large as planet-conquering war frigates to dock without jeopardizing one another. That was part of why it had managed to remain flying, despite the crackdown in the last few years from the Centurium: assaulting Adumon Station would be like attacking a large asteroid. An asteroid full of angry, heavily armed pirate ships. So far, the Feudal Queens hadn’t deigned to send one of their planet-crushers to enforce law and order on the fringes of space, which was just fine with the spacers, smugglers, Flagged pirates, and Flagless ne'er do wells who called Adumon Station home. Hals took a deep breath of the cold air and smiled. She loved it here.

Then Fifth hiccupped, and brought her back.

“Okay, Fifth. We’re going to go see a friend of mine, he’s going to keep you safe while we sort things out.”

“I can’t,” the young girl said firmly. “If we get separated, I’m supposed to wait. And-- oh,” she caught herself. “I thought they’d be waiting outside.”

“Most Flagless crew don’t stick around after their captain has died,” Hals said. “Just worry about yourself now, sweet-thing. Those spacers aren’t your friend.”

“We’ve been flying together for weeks!” Fifth objected. But she didn’t stop Hals from pulling her away, down a triplet of alleys and onto the main drag of the Red Crescent. Each of the four had a strangely colored tinge to the metal it was made of. Some said it was because Adumon Station was actually originally four different spaceports welded together by ancient Flagless pirates over the years, but Hals suspected it was someone’s artistic choice. Not everybody who became a pirate wanted to. Maybe one of those cruel, cutthroat bastards had loved painting once, and had decided to express that love a little when building the station. Or maybe it was just random. Anyway, Asendor lived across the station down in Blue Crescent, and so they walked.

---

Bridge Lift Battle

Bridge Lift Battle

by Lucas X. Wiseman

Ahmed cheered when the yellow lights began to flash, warning the commuters of the imminent bridge lift. Through the windshield of his mom’s Honda Civic he could see his fellow pilgrims groan and throw up their hands. He imagined them swearing and cursing their bad luck, while he giggled excitedly.

The commute into Portland was long and exhausting on the best of mornings; but when the bridge rose to let a cargo carrier or yacht pass, it transfigured into the most important place in Ahmed’s world. He put the car in park and thought about texting his boss to explain his imminent lateness. He did not. Let that controlling micromanager stew and worry– she deserved it, anyway. Satisfied by his petty act of defiance, he opened the app and pulled his gaming goggles out of the glove compartment.

The game was called Yai Matsumo, and some days the opportunity to play it was all that motivated him to get up, climb into the car and brave the river crossing. That was the spark of brilliance that had made the game an international success overnight; you could not play it whenever you wanted. Only when a real-world event happened, like the bridge lift, would the game begin. His goggles lit up and the familiar music played from his phone. He grinned. Goggles on.

An animated newscaster appeared in his augmented vision, her hair a tangled mess. 

“Operator Ahmed, thank goodness you’re here!” she said. “The lauded vessel Hartfilia sails nearby, but she is in danger, and it is up to you to protect her! Prepare to defend the ship against the monsters that seek to destroy it!”

His goggles activated fully, immersing him into the game. No longer was he sitting in his car; instead he sat inside a massive tank, its turret rotating as he turned his phone left and right. Calibration complete. He was prepared for combat.

Ahmed pushed a button near his eye and connected to the voice chat, listening in for a few seconds as his fellow players on the bridge chattered happily. A few spoke Russian or Ukrainian, but everyone knew what they needed to do.

“This is ThunderCivic,” Ahmed said, joining the burbling conversation. “Who’s ready to kick some monster ass?” 

The gamertags of his teammates appeared as they answered him, and he took quick stock of them. No one he recognized from previous battles.

“This is KinderDave, ready to go.”

“CoDSniperXx here, this is my third fight on the bridge. Careful of the water ‘mons, they’ll sneak up on us.”

“MamaSeeTatas, locked and loaded.”

“This is so freaking sweet! SeizeTheCarp here, I’m going to watch the overland routes.”

“Good call Carp, I’ll help you,” Ahmed said. He rotated his turret and scanned the riverbank behind him. No longer did he see a line of cars stretching back along the highway; now he saw a digital landscape of craters and monster corpses from previous battles. He zoomed in and inspected the horizon. Sure enough, he saw the blurry motion of approaching monsters.

“Operators, prepare for combat!” the newscaster’s voice sounded. A countdown appeared in his vision. He wiped his sweaty palms on his khakis. Now was no time to slip up. The timer hit zero, and the simulated roar of monsters echoed through his car. He saw them clearly on the horizon, and small colored flashes of light began to sprinkle the landscape. His distant allies were already in the thick of things.

The game’s brilliance was that it involved nearly everyone within a few miles of the “event epicenter.” Even if he wasn’t on the bridge itself, he could still help defend the ship by fighting from wherever he was. Ahmed had been on the distant edges of the circle a few times, assisting and battling as the monsters swarmed past him toward the vulnerable boat. Now though, he was the last line of defense. Nothing stood between the bridge and the boat below it except him and a handful of others. He took a shaky breath and wiped his hands again. Calm down. As the fight along land increased in intensity, he heard a player call out for aid. The river monsters were coming.

He rotated, trusting Carp to take out any of the quick monsters that made it past the defenders further back along the land route, and surveyed the situation. The waterborne monsters were tricky to see, but they typically had fins sticking out of the water like sharks. He aimed his cannon and fired twice, and a satisfying noise told him he’d scored a hit. His score went up, and he watched his name rise to the top half of the scoreboard. Not a great sign; a single kill put him above half of his teammates. He reached out and slapped at the dashboard in front of him, managing to set the car’s air conditioning to full after a few clumsy attempts. 

“ThunderCivic here, can I get some help along the riverbank?”

“With you, Civic,” a soft voice said. He glanced over to see that it was a player on the other side of the bridge speaking to him. Her tag identified her as Pickle.

“Thanks Pickle,” Ahmed replied. Their combined fire seemed to thin out the oncoming wave of fins. The simulated sounds of combat around him faded as the first round ended. The ship’s health bar was at full, and not a single monster had managed to get past either side. The Hartfilia crept closer. Any players actually on the boat would have an amazing view of the battle, and they’d have the special ability to call in reinforcements from the air. Ahmed hoped to take a river cruise one day, just to try it.

“Hell yeah, we got this. Easy,” a player named ThrillerMac said.

“Don’t get cocky, kid!” an elderly voice replied, which elicited a few laughs from the general chat.

“You guys should check out my podcast, it’s about how the government is secretly using LSD to…” Ahmed muted that player before they could continue further. He was focused on the game. He didn’t need anything else distracting him. 

A new score of rumbles, screeches and roars sounded as the second phase began. Ahmed’s nose felt cold, but he didn’t dare turn down the AC. He needed dry hands. He wiped them on his pants again.

The second wave was usually when the boat sank. The first wave was meant to teach you the mechanics, how to use your smartphone and the goggles to aim your tank’s barrel. The second wave was where the difficulty skyrocketed. Ahmed had never made it into the third and final phase, but today he knew he would. He had to.

The attacking monsters from the land and river continued, but Ahmed let Carp and Pickle handle them. He turned his attention to the air, where he knew bomb carrying bat-creatures would descend from the clouds. He switched to anti-air mode with a flick of his hands and began to pepper the skies with flak. The sound of small explosions and tinny screams filled his car as the monsters died. Several others were helping defend the skies, and the lines of white fire that they spit out reminded him of watching archerfish with his grandfather as they threw lances of water into the air at unsuspecting insects. His goggles vibrated, jarring his teeth. He snapped around to see a big crablike monster raising a claw for another attack. His tank’s hitpoints dropped as the monster struck again, and Ahmed swore. He grabbed his passenger side headrest with one hand and pulled himself fully into the back seat of his car so he could spin freely to face the monster. He twisted his phone and the turret swiveled to blast the creature away. From the back seat, he could see that a cluster of demon crabs were creeping forward, clawing at the tanks.

“Shit, there’s dozens!” he shouted. “What happened?”

“We got overwhelmed!” Carp cried. “I’m out of this fight.”

Ahmed shook his head and concentrated on peeling away the monsters from around him. His tank shook again as one of the bat things bombed him, making his vision blurry and his phone vibrate violently, further numbing his already cold fingers. The boat was being bombed too, and it was nowhere near passing under the bridge to safety. They were failing. Ahmed ground his teeth and paused to say a quick prayer before continuing to shoot. He wasn’t as devout as his father and mother, but in times of pressure the reflex to pray was instinctive. 

He began to pivot his body in the back seat of the sedan, spending a few seconds to shoot the nearest enemies in the sky, then spinning to confront the land based threats, then back to the sky. His abdomen ached and he kept banging his knee into the backseat’s buckles. The pain and aches distracted him, but he pushed down the signals his body was sending him and kept at it, becoming a dervish of monster slaying firepower. Slowly, the tide turned on his side of the bridge. The monsters stopped advancing past him, and his allies began to rally and hold their own, covering the boat. Simulated crab gore splattered the road around him, evidence of his victory. Ahmed breathed heavily as the second phase ended. He’d made it, barely.

“ThunderCivic, carry harder!” Pickle cheered. He glanced at his score and his jaw dropped; he was in first with thirty nine direct kills. Only Pickle was even close to him.

“Looks like there’s only seven tanks left on this side of the bridge, four on Civic’s side,” KinderDave said. “Gonna be a tough fight against the boss.”

“We can do it,” Ahmed said breathlessly. His air conditioning was still going full blast, but he could barely feel it. His face felt flushed and his forehead was coated with sweat. 

“We can do it!” he said again, shouting. “Who’s with me?!”

His remaining allies whooped and cheered with him, and his heart beat faster. They were counting on him. 

Phase three began with the sound of rushing water, and Ahmed pivoted towards the west. Rising from the river was a massive thing, like a nightmare tadpole merged with a scorpion. Its claws dug into the riverbanks on either side as it heaved its body from the water. The torso was covered in slime and scales the color of rotted wood, and instead of a head there was an open maw, with grasping pincers around it. Ahmed watched in horror as an airplane flying nearby got too close, and one of the pincers snatched it out of the sky and forced it into the gaping mouth.

“It’s so gross!” someone yelled. Ahmed shook his head in dismay. It was terrifying, and he watched its health bar appear and stretch across the entire length of the river. A timer appeared in his vision, displaying how long until the monster got in range of the boat and sank it. He knew from reading the forums that the boss could kill the ship in a single strike.

It would be impossible to miss a creature of such size; but the game’s designers knew that. Shooting it with his tank would do almost nothing unless he aimed for specific weak spots, which cycled into and out of availability as the creature walked. Or scuttled, in this case. 

The third phase began, and Ahmed took his time lining up a shot near the creature’s mouth, carefully considering the highlighted targets that peppered the creature’s body. It seemed that targeting the bases of the legs would be a good way to cripple the thing, and buy the Hartfilia more time. Ahmed saw the other tanks that remained take aim as well, and as one they began to fire. 

Leading the shots so they would land precisely where intended was difficult; and Ahmed had very little experience. He’d done practice boss battles before, like most players, but this was the first time in a real third-phase fight, and he was missing. His comrades were more accurate, and pixelated explosions bloomed around the base of the creature’s walking tentacles, causing it to roar in agony. Its approach slowed, its health bar dropping marginally, but it did not stop. With a wave of motion, a layer of pustules on the boss monster’s body burst apart, and a stream of flying monsters spewed forth. 

“I’ll take the bats, keep firing at the boss!” Ahmed shouted. 

Though his aim was superior against this type of monster, he still struggled to keep them at bay. These bat creatures had more health, were more likely to dodge, and he was getting tired. In desperation, he peeled off half a goggle so he could see the controls for his car’s sunroof. He got it open and poked out his head, so he could spin quickly and survey the entire bridge. He was certain he looked like a madman to the other commuters, but that was the least of his worries. As Ahmed pulled his torso out of the sunroof, he nearly dropped his phone. His hands were sweaty, and his fingers started to ache from squeezing the thing for so long. Sweat blinded him momentarily as it slipped down his face and past his goggles. He swiped at his forehead with a shirt sleeve, scraping his skin with the buttons. 

A monster took advantage of his momentary lapse in fire and dove down, digging its talons into a tank near Ahmed. The player screamed in frustration as their vehicle was destroyed. The opposing side of the bridge was losing players as well, and the main boss was taking less and less hits as the tanks refocused on defending themselves, not fighting the greater threat. It was much closer now, and its health bar had barely moved down.

A moment of clarity zipped through Ahmed’s mind. They didn’t need to kill the big monster to win, they just needed to buy the Hartfilia enough time to escape. Them dying wasn’t just an unfortunate casualty anymore, it was a necessity.

“Ignore the little ‘mons, focus the boss! It doesn’t matter if we die, so long as we cripple it!” Ahmed said. His hands shook and he refocused his cannon on the locomotive appendages of the huge monster, taking careful aim. At this range, he thought he could finally hit it.

“Are you crazy, Civic?” a ThrillerMac asked. “We can’t win if we’re dead!”

“Do what he says!” an authoritative Pickle commanded. “He’s right, we just need to buy time!”

Pickle joined him in firing at the leading leg, and their cannon booms synced up almost perfectly, making a single noise. The beast loomed over the bridge, blocking a huge portion of the sky. The boat below was so close to safety. They needed a minute, perhaps less.

One by one, the tanks obeyed and returned their attention to the boss, peppering it with blasts aimed at its weak points. One of its huge eyes was blasted closed, and a leg vanished in a plume of black ooze when Pickle managed a well aimed shot. Each blow slowed the creature, and bought the Hartfilia the time it needed.

With their attention fully on the bigger threat, the few remaining players around Ahmed began to die off, their colorful tanks winking to gray as they sacrificed themselves. Ahmed himself had to resist the instinct to kill a bat bomber as it flew straight toward him. Instead of hitting it and saving himself, he focused, aiming right for the gut of the boss. In the midst of all the noise and explosions, he’d noticed a small weak point there, highlighted in red by his goggles. The bat swooped down and released its payload, and a high pitched whistling noise filled the car as it approached. Ahmed’s heart was racing, but he aimed carefully, and squeezed a shot off just before the bomb landed. It erased his health bar, and YOU ARE DEAD appeared in the center of his vision. He dismissed the message.

His shot had caused the monster to roar in agony, giving the Hartfilia additional seconds to gain distance and chug beneath the bridge. The monster seemed off balance, but it was still standing. Ahmed turned. All around him were craters and grayed out tanks. Only one tank, on the opposite side of the bridge still stood: Pickle.

“Civic, where’d you just hit it?” she yelled. Ahmed heard the panic in her voice. The monster was still close enough to hit the ship, and they’d lose everything. All of this, for naught.

“The stomach, high and right. Target’s tiny, but you can just see it. I know you can hit it,” he said. He whispered another prayer as Pickle’s turret spun and aimed where he indicated. The boss recovered from its injury and made a gurgling, gulping noise, reaching a pincer down to grasp the Hartfilia. The ship was seconds away from safety. Pickle fired. 

She missed. Groans echoed up and down the bridge as all the players watching saw the shot go wide, bouncing off of the blubbery hide of the monster. The pincer wrapped around the tail end of the Hartfilia and dragged it backward, pulling it out of the water and dropping it into its mouth like a fat man eating a shrimp. Ahmed closed his eyes. His team had lost. He’d lost. Sad music began to play from over the speakers, a tinny rendition of taps.

“Shit man, that sucks.” Seize the Carp said.

“We came so close, too!” replied KinderDave. 

“Good try, Pickle,” another player said. “Tough shot to make.”

“If there were more of us alive, maybe we could have done it.”

“Why did we stop protecting ourselves? Whose idea was that anyway?”

“Better luck next time.”

“Great call, Civic.”

“What was that?” Ahmed asked. He listened harder.

“Ignoring the weak ones, that was right. We almost had it,” Pickle said. Ahmed’s throat was tight, and it took a few tries before he could answer. 

“Oh, uh, thank you,” Ahmed said. “You too. Nearly had it.”

The monster roared in victory, and the newscaster reappeared.

“We were unsuccessful this time, Operator, but we’ll get it the next!”

An alarm blared, letting the commuters know that the bridge would soon lower, and the game faded out. No longer was a monster standing in the river; it was empty except for an average barge, hauling sand or gravel somewhere boring. 

Ahmed removed his goggles. With the game over, he could no longer see the names over the vehicles, couldn’t identify who his former teammates were. Instead of valiant tank commanders, he was surrounded by commuters in too-tight ties and drab blouses. He realized  people were staring at him, and he quickly reentered his car and closed the sunroof. The air conditioning chugged away at full blast, and Ahmed wiped his face with his sleeve again. He was covered in sweat, his dress shirt soaked through. It would look like he ran to work when he got in. Maybe that’s what he’d tell them. He continued to stare at the other drivers. Most of them couldn’t wait to continue on their way; none of them wanted to look at him. They had no clue what had just transpired.

He felt terribly alone.

He wanted to share in the glory of battle, the bittersweet taste of near-victory. He wanted to go over every moment of the fight with ThrillerMac and Pickle and the others, discussing each heart pounding shot and near miss. He wanted to experience closeness with the people around him, except they were all sealed in their own steel and glass bubbles. Separated only by feet, but wholly isolated from each other, with no way to communicate now that the game was done. Fire seized him, rising up from his belly. The barge below was through and the bridge would fully lower soon. He had moments. Would anyone care? Did it matter?

The car protested mildly as he opened his door without removing the keys from the ignition, but he ignored it. He stood up straight, his chest near to bursting from the hammering of his heart. A few nearby drivers looked at him, alarmed, but he let a calming smile come to his face. He ran forward and started to shout.

“Operators, I am Ahmed, the ThunderCivic! Meet me at Low Bar at six tonight! Please!” He repeated his plea, running down the center lane of the bridge between the cars. A few people smiled and nodded to him, some waved. Most kept their eyes straight forward, pretending he wasn’t there. He imagined them begging the bridge to drop faster so they could be on their way, away from the crazy dark skinned man raving in the middle of the road. 

Ahmed made it back to his car without being run over, and he sped to work. He was distracted the whole morning, and he was reprimanded by his manager for his appearance, tardiness, and lack of focus. Just as five o’clock rolled around, he finally snapped and quit. His manager’s face was priceless, and he relished it. 

Traffic going back was its usual awful self, with no bridge lift to liven it up. Ahmed made it to the bar late, worried that a friend or two might have already come and gone. He didn’t want to be alone, to be the only one. Would anyone listen? Would they come at all?

He pushed the door open and was nearly knocked back by the roar from inside. He stood frozen as a huge man said his name and rushed forward, hands outstretched. The man was ThrillerMac, and he gave Ahmed a crushing hug. He was dragged inside and a drink was shoved into his hands. 

Everywhere around him, he heard a dozen familiar voices. People were reliving the fight, their moves and counter moves, their heroic last stands. And through the crowd, Ahmed saw a girl with white hair and a pink jacket sitting at the bar. She was smiling at him, and on her collar was a small pin; a bright green pickle. 

So A Genie Walks Into A Bar...

by Lucas X. Wiseman

So A Genie Walks Into A Bar...

By Lucas X. Wiseman

“Ya know, you can tell a lot about a generation by the things they wish for,” the alcoholic said to Adam.

He’d just finished polishing the bartop and had accidentally wandered into conversational range. The sole patron left in “Moe’s Bar and Haberdashery” was a thick chested, salt-of-the-earth kind of man that Adam assumed had traditional family values and a fear of people with funny accents.

He’d been in here for hours, pounding the same drink– a strange dark liquor that came out of a dusty, spiderweb-covered bottle Adam hadn’t even known was on the top shelf.

 Adam had been tempted to cut him off just to make him leave, but each time he brought the man a drink, he got tipped a fiver. He’d almost doubled his takehome off this guy, and he wasn’t about to pass that up.

“I mean, shit,” the man said. “Look at kids today. You ask them what they wanna be when they grow up, and they say famous! Like it’s a career option!” 

Adam nodded again, a practiced action that consoled, agreed with, and affirmed a patron’s rant without actually requiring him to comment. It had taken him weeks to perfect. 

“What about you, what do you wish for?” the alcoholic asked. Adam winced. A direct question, no nod this time. 

“I don’t really know,” he said. “I’m not much for wishing. I usually make due with what I have.” That answer was sufficiently pragmatic, he judged. The man should be pacified and continue his talk without further contribution from Adam. 

“I talked to a girl last week, you know what she wanted?” Adam shook his head and started organizing the bottles on the shelf, turning them so the labels faced outward. “She wanted to become a famous TikTok skit… influencer?” The man rolled his glass between weathered hands, staring at the dark liquor. Every time Adam had poured it for him, it had a different, complexly earthy scent. He wasn’t sure if that meant it was very expensive or very, very bad.

Adam knew very well, he followed several girls just like that online, but he doubted the patron before him wanted to hear that. “Oh yeah, uh… like an actress or something?” Shit. He’d answered. This was officially a conversation now. 

“Not even; that would be respectable. This gal, she wanted to be famous for the videos she made of her godsdamned cats.” He set his drink down. 

“She would like, knit these stupid little sweaters for them. And there’s four of them mind, four cats. The sweaters would be from some tv show and she’d dress the cats up and do voices for each of the characters.” The alcoholic shook his head. “I mean, who would watch that shit?”

Adam thought this would be a bad time to mention that he would probably watch that shit, so instead he frowned. “Crazy.”

“Two hundred years ago it wasn’t like this. People wanted real things. I’m not talking about money neither,” he said. “Power. Influence. Longevity. The ability to change the world.” He threw his drink back, and Adam dutifully poured him another; this time it smelled like the soil after a downpour. The alcoholic slid him a twenty.

“I can’t get a respectable wish out of anybody,” the man said. “My buddies always get the good responses, the ‘I wish I could talk to dogs’ or ‘I wish my mom’s cancer was gone.’ Stuff like that,” he said. “Al Adeen even heard a good one from the president last year!” the alcoholic said. “He wanted the most delicious American cheeseburger. At least that’s original!”

Adam blinked. “The current president?”

The man nodded.

“What are you guys? A group of like, consultants?” Adam asked. Mentally he kicked himself again. He was making a rookie bartender’s mistake, getting sucked into the story. 

“You could say that, yeah.” 

He turned back to the bottles to continue facing them out, but he was already done. Except for counting the till, turning off the lights and leaving, there was nothing else to do, and fifteen minutes left till close. Nothing to do but talk to the weird alcoholic. Adam faced him.

“What’d you mean, ‘a respectable wish’?” Adam asked.

“Mmm?” 

“You said that your buddies hear “good wishes” from older people. Is that like, insider talk? Like how studios “discover” movie stars?”

“More or less. How old are you, kid?” the alcoholic asked. “22?”

Adam was slightly unnerved that he had guessed correctly. He was covered in tattoos and had worn a beard since he was fifteen, and most people assumed he was in his 30s. 

“28,” he lied. The man’s thick eyebrows stretched upward. 

“Sure you are,” he said. “So tell me, what’s a 22 year old bartender in this armpit of a town want out of life? Give an old timer like me some perspective.”

“Old timer? You hardly look more than…” Adam realized he wasn’t sure how old the man looked. When he’d first sat down at the bar, Adam had him pegged him close to retirement age. Now though, he looked older. Ancient. The lines in his dark face were deep, and his hair wasn’t gray, it was white as bone. His eyes were the color of mud, but they captured Adam anyway, and he had to jerk his head to the side to look away.

“Don’t bother flattering me,” the man said, throwing back his drink. “I’m old, and I know it.” He waved Adam away when he went to fill the glass again. “I’m done for tonight.”

“Right.” Adam said.

“So?” The man asked. “What’s your wish?”

Adam leaned back, bracing his hands against the bartop for support. “I don’t usually think about that stuff. When you grow up in a town like this, you either leave or you don’t. I didn’t.” 

“So you want to get out!” the man said. He rubbed his hands together. “Excellent choi-”

“Well no,” Adam interrupted. “I sort of like it here, actually. The town’s an armpit, yeah, but it’s home.” 

The alcoholic sagged back. “Of course,” he said.

“I wish my grandparents were still alive?” Adam said. “That’d be nice.”

The alcoholic shook his head. “Death is a natural part of life. Try again.”

Adam frowned. “I guess I’d like the girl at the Dennys around the corner to go out with me.”

The man shook his head again. “Can’t help you with love, either,” he said. “Look, what’s the thing you want most, right now, in this moment?” he asked. 

Adam glanced at the clock. He was tired and this man was weirding him out. 

“I guess I wish it was midnight so I could go home,” he said.

The alcoholic rolled his eyes, and all the lights in the bar flickered. 

“Godsdamned kids today.” 

He snapped his fingers.

Skytrain Heist – Part Two

Skytrain Heist – Part Two

by Lucas X. Wiseman

Written June 23, 2024

“Are you going to tell me how you shot down my ships?” the Marshall asked, now that my coffee was sufficiently and deliciously full of real cream. I sighed happily and sipped it, nodding.

Marshall Xen waited approximately thirty seconds while I sipped and savored.

“Ms. Smythe.”

“Righto,” I said. “Where was I? One of the Meatheads was dead, Cousin and the other two were battling your goons, and me and Brains were panicking. We ran out of the navigation control area and out onto the deck where the fighting was happening. Brains was slower than me with her leg and all, but we stuck together. I’m not one to--”

I cut myself off, a wave of emotion clouding my vision again. My last memory of her was seeing that cold, ambitious calculation in her dull brown eyes, and realizing what it meant for me. What I meant to her.

“She left me. I can’t believe…”

“Focus, Ms. Smythe. 

I dabbed at my eyes with the flimsy little napkin the doughnuts came with and took a deep, deep breath.

“Sorry. Okay, so we got across the deck where the shooting was happening. It was obvious that the potato guns the Meatheads were using had some kind of efficacy against your Marshalls-- or at least, they didn’t want to get the paint scraped. They were ducking back and forth in the air, avoiding the huge, tumbling slugs that smoked through the air as they soared. Big, dumb weapons for big, dumb people.”

“We recovered one of the projectile shooters. Some form of… gas powered grenade pistol?” The Marshall asked.

“You’d have to ask them, I don’t know,” I said, waving the comment away. “But it was also clear to me, at least, that the Meatheads hadn’t brought enough ammo for a long fight. Your pilots couldn’t be sure they could take a hit from those cannons so they were dodging, but once the ammo ran out…”

“So anyway, we legged it across all five of the dirigible cars, until we came to the final one, and we just sort of stood there, panicking. We’d run out of road, literally. I was feeling this massive weight of overwhelm, I wanted to piss my pants and surrender, I wanted to jump and try to… well, I don’t know, but I felt–”

“Stick to facts, please, Ms. Smythe.”

“Facts, righto. Anyway, I decide we might as well hide. I break us in to the storage area, and what do we find inside but a bunch of fancy mech suits and weapons? Now that surprised the hell out of me, and I stood stupid and dumb, but Brains clambers up into one and starts doing her thing, hacking or whatever. I keep poking around, thinking of finding a parachute or a, I dunno, magic set of wings. Mostly just shell shocked.”

“Your companion succeeds and engages with our hovers?”

“That’s the long and short of it, yeah. Meatheads and Cousin retreated after us, maybe figuring we had some kind of a plan. I climb back up onto the deck, no weapon, no magic wings or nothing, ready to just… surrender, I guess. But they’re up there shooting at each other still, and then Brains pops up in her new mecha.”

“You seen em? They got these arm cannon things that shoot… shit I dunno, air, or maybe magnetism? Whatever they did, they disable the first hover, it drops like a rock. The second pilot, I guess she saw what happened so she maneuvers over the dirigible car so that when she gets hit, she drops onto it instead of out of the sky.”

I blew out my cheeks. I’d had too many doughnuts too fast and now there was an ache in my stomach too. Or maybe that had to do with the story I was telling.

“There were an awful lot of Marshalls inside that thing, Marshall Xen,” I said. “Dozen, at least?”

“A full contingent is thirteen.”

“Baker’s, then. At any rate, they come spilling out like angry ants, and I realize I’m caught in the middle again, my fellows on one side, ya’ll on the other. Except Brains, Cousin and the Meatheads are all retreating, leaping over the attachment cables. I see what they are thinking and start to run after them, but I get grazed by a blast of some kind, and it knocks me down and out. When I come to, I’m maybe fifteen feet from the edge. Couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. My ears were ringing…”

I saw her again then, framed clear as crystal in my mind. That clever brown eyed girl, staring across at me. I could feel the blood coming out of my ears and dripping down my chin, and our eyes met. I didn’t see compassion or affection or concern on her face. 

“Brains stared at me across the gap. She said something, but my ears…”

“And she blasted the conjunction cable apart,” the Marshall concluded.

“There was a bit of a hitch when it blew, and I fell over again. When I got my feet under me, the rest of the train was soaring away, and then a big sweaty Marshall tackled me. And now I’m here.”

Marshall Xen finished scribbling and flipped her pad closed. She regarded me in much the same way that Brains had done, with cool analysis, little emotion. But she wasn’t as good at poker as me, I could tell. Something was going on behind her eyes, though she was hiding it real good.

“So, that was about six hours ago? Long enough for your medifolks to regrow my eardrums and fix my concussion,” I said. “But since we’re still talking and you started by bringing in confectionary bribes, well, I know the search ain’t been too successful.”

“It… has not been,” the Marshall said evenly. 

“So then, riddle me this Marshall Xen,” I said, my fingers dancing along the table between us in an uneven rhythm. “What was so damn valuable on that ship that you’re still looking? I mean, I see a hundred of them things fly over a day. What was in the one we hit? Obviously the dirigible that was carrying them mecha got left behind when they made their escape, minus the one Brains was in, so that ain’t it…”

For the first time, the Marshall didn’t seem perfectly precise and put together. She wore an expression that reminded me of a kid caught in a lie. Nothing like when I’d got my cuffs off, but still she was surprised. Which got me thinking, maybe there was a way out of this for me.

“What was it? Gold bullion? Citizenship chits? Medical equipment? No, too common, no reason to fly it neither…” I mused. “Maybe the whole car was them mecha suits? But every police force on the coast has them, so they ain’t unique. And I didn’t see what was in the other couple dirigible carriers, but…”

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. “You can’t find it,” I said.

“Yes, that’s why we’re having this conversation, Ms.–”

“Naw, I mean you’ve gotta have trackers in that shit. I bet each one of them blimps has got some kinda tracking, plus the engine would have one too, right? But you can’t find none of them.”

The Marshall just looked at me, and I gave her a big, toothy grin.

“Shit, you ain’t after the loot. You want Brains.”

The Marshall didn’t move, didn’t blink, barely breathed, but I knew I was right. Some po-dunk kid from flyover country had figured out a way to hack and steal their shit, and they didn’t know how.

“Well, now. That puts a rightful interesting spin on me helping, wouldn’t you say?”

“I wouldn't say it that particular way,” she said slowly.

“Well, you don’t talk as pretty as me,” I agreed. “But I think what you’re after is the girl who managed to disable and evade you. The stuff is way less important. Am I right?”

“Your associates are of interest to us, yes.”

“Mmhmm.”

We stared at each other, me and Marshall Xen. She looked real hard at me, too, and I almost broke the silence first. Lucky for me, a yawn took over my mouth before any words could. I felt my jaw crack and gave my neck a rub. Once I was through, I could see she was starting to squirm. Bad gambler she’d be, Marshall Xen. 

“Well, I ain’t getting any younger,” I said. “What’s the deal?”

“The same as I said before, if you–”

I shook my head real slow like. “No, I think the arithmetic has changed a bit. You’re after Brains cause she’s valuable. She’s not like that shit in the Skytrain, she’s unique. One of a kind. And I don’t think you and your friends are interested in her because of that fancy prosthesis she made herself.”

“You’re assuming a great deal about what we want.”

“Always been a bit of a gambler, me.” I took another risk, acting on a hunch I’d had since she sat down. “Who are you really, then?”

The “Marshal” eyed me, then reached into her blouse and pulled out some kind of tiny disk on a chain from around her neck. She clicked it once, and then pinched the bridge of her nose for a few seconds, eyes closed. Either I was giving her a headache, or she’d already had one.

“We’ve got about two minutes,” she said, her posture sagging slightly. “Nobody else is hearing this, ok? They’re having camera and audio issues right now.”

I hiked an eyebrow up as far as it could go. “Well? Go on then.”

“Your friend did three things that should be impossible. One, she hacked into and disabled the AI daemon that protects and directs the skytrain. It’s a thinking AI, able to fight back, and she wiped it out completely– in no time. Impressive, yes, but something many well trained Netspikers could do.”

I selected another doughnut and gestured for her to get on with it. My stomach was complaining that it was full, but I nibbled the classic chocolate round anyway. Who knew when I’d get a chance to eat this good again? Plus, it made me look nonchalant. 

“Secondly, she bypassed the bio lock on that security mecha, as you said. It should only have functioned at the command of a registered cop or a soldier.”

“Thirdly? I asked.”

“You remember you told me about how she took those Marshall ships out?”

I grinned at her. “You already knew, though.”

“She took them down remotely, using the malware cannon in the mecha. Marshall aircraft are insanely well shielded, even against shit like Mal-C’s. Which means she’d either already written and prepared her own program to load into the cannon, or she wrote one in real time. Either way, we’re impressed. Beyond impressed.”

“So she’s a prodigy.”

“Exactly,” Xen said. 

“You ain’t no Marshall, neither.”

She gave me a smirk that felt like the first bit of real, non-performed emotion I’d seen. She’d been putting on airs for a while, and winking at me from behind the mask of “Marshall Xen” was her way of letting off a little steam.

“You’re quite a lot smarter than I expected, Ms. Smythe.”

“We’re not all meatheads down in flyover country,” I replied. 

“So I see. So here’s the deal, the real one. I bust you out of here, we go get Brains, and then you convince her to help us with a job. You do that, and we succeed? We all get paid, big time.”

“You and your fellows, youse a crew of Netspikers?”

“Honey, we’re the Netspikers,” she said proudly. “But there’s a tough nut we need to crack, and it seems like you and your friend are just the women for the job.

“What’s the cut?”

“Ten mil in Zuilder Coin.”

“Ten million Z?” My jaw dropped, and I don’t mind saying it. That kind of crypto could get a girl a nice beachfront property almost anywhere along the coast. But momma didn’t raise no fool.

“How do I know you’re good for it? That you won’t just find her, shoot me and pop off to Neverland with all that dosh?”

“We’re an honorable group of thieves,” Xen said with a pout. “We steal from the obscenely wealthy and give to the poor. Which means us, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“Plus, killing smart people is messy, unprofessional, and bad for business. Always got to think about the next job,” she said. 

The disk around her neck chirped two quick notes, and her posture straightened up immediately. I felt her become Marshall Xen again, quick as putting on a hat.

“Well? What do you think Ms. Smythe? Will you aid us?”

“I think I’m not going to wait around for a better offer,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“And one last thing. I know you’re bound to be angry at her. You might want revenge, you might want to kill her– but justice must take its course. No heroics, no getting even. Heard?”

“Heard.” I said solemnly. She was right about one thing, I was definitely looking to get even– but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t take all the advantage I could first. Something was telling me that Brains wasn’t just your average one legged hacker girl from the middle of nowhere. Powerful people were very interested in her, and I’d be damned if I couldn’t turn that to my advantage.

Xen stood up and flashed me a quick wink. 

“Let’s hit the skies, then.”

Skytrain Heist – Part One

Skytrain Heist – Part One

by Lucas X. Wiseman

The handcuffs the Marshalls had slapped on me were a new fancy model, apparently “coded to my DNA and unescapable without the key.”

That was what they told me when they clapped them on, anyway. I sighed and laid down on the comfortable couch I was shackled to. Not like my crew cared enough to try to bust me out. I’d learned that the hard way.

When the interrogation lounge door finally opened, I was hit with the smell of hot, delicious coffee and fried bread. The woman who walked in had a steaming cup in one hand, and a box of doughnuts in the other. I salivated.

“Devan Smythe,” the woman said. “I’m Marshal Xen. I hope you’ve got an appetite.”

She set the food and drink down on the stylish coffee table and slid it my way. 

“Not poisoned, is it?” I asked. The answer didn’t matter much; a maple bar was already on the way to my mouth before she answered.

“No, we need you to answer some questions first.”

“Before you poison me?” I asked around the delicious pastry. “Well, okay. Keep the doughnuts coming and I’m an open book.”

She didn’t quite smile, but her lips twitched. 

“Ok Ms. Smythe. Tell me about the job you pulled.”

I sipped my coffee. Black, which was vile, but it was still caffeine. 

“It’s like this. Dirigible trains are fat, vulnerable vaults of goodies, and I’m a poor kid from the bad side of town. Put two and two together.”

“How many of you were involved?”

“Six,” I told her. “I’d give you their names, but…”

She waved my objection away. “You’re not a snitch, I’m sure.”

“Not without some guarantees on your part,” I said. “I want immunity.”

“Grand-theft aircraft is a pretty serious crime. Especially since we don’t know where your buddies went,” the Marshal told me.

“You’ve not caught them? Lucky buggers,” I said. I retrieved a new doughnut: this one filled with creme.

 “Listen: you want the details of our little operation? It’s your lucky day; they hung me out to dry. I’m willing to talk. Hell, I’m eager. But I need this to not ruin my life.”

Marshall Xen took a plain glazed from the box and chewed. “I see your position. You’ve got information we want, and motive to turn them in: all you need is incentive. I can persuade the powers that be to work with that.”

I squinted at her. “You funnin’ me, Marshall?”

“I don’t “fun”.”

Damn it, but I believed her. She spent a solid ten seconds eating her doughnut and maintaining cold, calculating eye contact with me. I tried not to blink.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” she said. “You’re going to tell me the story of the heist, without naming names, and you won’t tell me where you were planning to rendezvous. I’ll go to my bosses and persuade them to cut you slack, you give me the rest of the details. Your life isn’t ruined, and I get a promotion. Deal?”

“What the hell,” I said. “Pop the popcorn: it’s storytime.”

---

The whole thing started because of the war. Not the capital “W” war between the once glorious nations of this forsaken continent, mind– I’m talking about the little wars between towns and villages and boroughs and preppers with way too much money and time and a degree in homemade landmines they got off the internet. That is what I grew up with, wars fought by neighbors. All people with a thousand guns, not a lick of sense, and a score to settle. Teacher taught us that in the before days, we were all one nation, under somegod-or-other, indivisible. Almost laughable now; if you look at a map, all you see is lines and divisions, little pocket kingdoms with little rulers who will shoot you dead just for steppin’ foot on the wrong rock.

And those rich coastal bastards? They just floated above it all once it got dangerous. They wanted to get their belongings to whichever mansion they’re living at this week, don’t they? But the ground ain’t safe. Not for big trucks, not for trains. Armored convoys can usually make it through ok, but they’re real expensive, and they still get hit. And it turns out, hydrogen is cheap. I dunno whose idea it first was, to ship above all the chaos, but I’m betting they’re a trillionaire now. Dozens of cargo blimps chained together in a giant train? Turns out to be right practical, once you consider the alternative.”

“I didn’t need a history lesson, Ms. Smythe,” Marshall Xen said drily.

I shrugged. “Give me a chance to finish my doughnut, it’ll make sense.”

I chewed with irritating slowness, but the Marshal was a pro. She watched patiently and sipped her own coffee without even a raised eyebrow. 

“Right; so that’s the history, but what you didn’t pick up on was the desperation. Everybody started using these skytrains to ship their shit, and little me, living down in a piss-poor trailer castle… I got used to hearing the buzz of the engines, and looking up at these fat, peaceful sacks of gold that just… hummed on by, while my belly grumbled. I just got to watch them fly on by, full of goodies I could never get my hands on. Skytrains don’t stop in flyover country. But then, well… they do fly over.”

“There were five of us, plus me-- six kids from the bad side of life. And we got it in our heads to take over one of those skytrains, to hitch a ride on it and land it somewhere, and we could sell the goods inside. One of our number, uh… I’ll call him Cousin, said he had family connections that could help us fence the goods, once we gottem. So Cousin has the connection to sell the shit-- now how was we gonna get it?”

“That’s where Brains came in. Brains is a genius. If she’d have been born in a coastal city, she’d be in a college somewhere, or in some boardroom running one of the companies we was trying to steal from. Instead, she got shot in a trailer-turf war when she was seven and lost her leg. So it goes, I guess. Anyway, she knows about this old tech, cause she reads when we have enough power to get online. Rest of us just look at porn or sports, but she’s reading. She tells us about these things called hang gliders.”

The Marshall seemed interested for the very first time in our conversation. “Go on,” she urged.

“I’m going, I’m going. Basics are this: fixed wing, lightweight craft. You launch them from somewhere real high up and glide down to the ground, hoopin and hollerin all the way. Except, you can throw a real little engine on them too, and then they can stay up for hours before eventually touching down to earth.”

“So you built these contraptions? What was your role, Ms. Smythe, and the others? What were they to do?”

“I’m light fingered,” I said, wiggling the fingers on my formerly-shackled hand. The Marshall stared at me with delicious shock which quickly transformed into panic. She leapt up and pulled her hand cannon, but I just sipped my coffee with careful slowness.

“Haven’t got any cream, have you? I haven’t had real milk in… years, actually.”

“How the hell did you do that?” Despite her fear and her surprise, her voice didn’t shake at all. An impressive lady, the Marshall.

“Magicians don’t tell, Marshall,” I said. I stayed real still and nonthreatening like, aware of the death-black barrel aimed straight at my left eye. “But don’t you worry none, I haven’t got anything against you. I was just getting tired of that chain clanking.”

“I should restrain you again,” the Marshall said. She paused for about five second before sitting back down. She put her weapon away but kept a hand on it, just in case. Smart lady.

“Well I guess you could, but why? I’m not here to cause trouble. We’re on the same team, see? Anyway, my job was to deal with locks. The other three, the Meatheads, well, they were there to knock heads. Know how many people are usually flying on of those skytrains?”

“Barely a skeleton crew; navigation is all automated. There’s usually an engineer and then a guard, or two.”

“See we didn’t know that,” I said. “We figured they’d be guarded heavy, there would be a pilot we could threaten… well, anyway. Brains designed the gliders, Cousin got us the engines, the Meatheads built them while Brains yelled at them to be careful… and we spent three godforsaken days trekking down a holler and up a mountain to get the altitude we needed.”

“You carried them?”

“Each of us, except Brains. Cause of her leg. She rode on the back of the Meathead she was sweet on. She’d built an attachment thing that could click her onto the glider with the biggest engine. Cousin got all mad, you know? Said she was a liability, but she said it was her idea and her gliders and she was coming with”. 

“Smart girl. She knew Cousin was a tricksy type, liable to leave her high and dry. Wish I’d been smart enough to see that,” I said bitterly.

“So you launch the gliders,” the Marshall hurried me along. I selected another doughnut, a chocolate one this time. 

“We did, and we hung in the air for almost an hour before we landed back on the mountain. A test run, see? To make sure everything worked. Brains and her meathead’s glider landed a bit heavy because of the extra weight, so they used some tree branches to reinforce it. And then we were ready for the real thing. We all had grappling hooks, Cousin had his trusty whacking staff, the Meatheads had guns, and I had my magic fingers. And then of course, it all went to hell.”

“So you got up in the air, flew over the skytrain, and landed. The report from the meck mentioned hearing you land, though she didn’t know it at the time. Next thing she knew, she was on the floor with a massive concussion.”

“Cousin whacked her good with his stick,” I said. “Meatheads shot the guard looking lady, she fell off.” I felt a pang of sadness, and I set down my coffee. 

“You seem bothered by her death?”

“I always imagined that the folk working on those machines, that they were evil. Mustache twirling villains, laughing at us poor folk as they soared over. But… she was just a person like us, trying to make her way in the world. She looked so scared and angry when she fell. Her scream…”

My throat was too tight to keep talking, and again the Marshall proved her stuff. She didn’t say a word, just waited till my eyes were water-free and my throat was clear.

“Anyway, we went looking for a pilot. Didn’t find one, just a control room. Brains is all jubilant like, mocking Cousin, saying “see, this is why I needed to come.” She starts hacking into the thing, I guess? I don’t know anything about that. Meanwhile, me and Cousin and two Meatheads go looking at all the goods. I crack the locks and we oooh and awe over all that shine. Brand new gaming systems, 3D projectors, computers, assistant robots with the big wheels and stretchy arms, real leather goods…”

“I’m aware of what was on the manifest,” Marshall Xen said coolly. 

“Sure but you didn’t feel what it was like. Remember where and how I grew up, now. Suddenly, it seemed like everything I’d ever had dreams of was going to become real. I was standing in a treasure horde. Only I’d forgotten about the dragon.”

“The guard who fell,” she said. I nodded.

“Those skytrains fly pretty high up. She had enough time and, I guess enough hate in her heart, to spend her last seconds reporting the attack instead of praying or whatever you do when you’re falling to your death.”

“And so we came.” 

“So you did, Marshall Xen.”

She flipped through a notebook with clinical detachment, and I admired how precise and polished her black fingernails were; each bearing the Marshall’s symbol. Nice touch, that.

“Your fellows opened fire when they saw a pair of Marshall hovercraft coming. Our Marshalls returned fire and destroyed two of your gliders. One of the… Meatheads, I presume, was killed, and her body fell. We’ve not yet recovered it for ID.”

“Brains had managed to hack the nav by that time, but the thing about skytrains is they’re awful slow.”

“Slow and steady?” the Marshall asked.

“Something like that. So Cousin and the remaining Meatheads are still shooting with you Marshalls, me and Brains are freaking out, trying to decide if we just bail. But we know the gliders can’t outrun those hovercraft, so all we can do is fight or die. Or I guess, get captured.”

“What I’m curious about is how you disabled our craft,” the Marshall said. “The report gets… hazy, there.”

“Ah, that’s an interesting tale,” I said. “But not one you’ll get unless I’m given something.”

She raised a perfect eyebrow at me.

I waited.

She waited longer.

“Cream?” I asked again, holding up my cup. I gave her my sweetest smile.

She sighed and I swear her eyes started to roll. 

“Fine. Cream. Wait here.”

“Oh, like I have a choice?” I called as she rose.

“Ms. Smythe, if you walk through that door without cuffs on, they’ll kill you first and ask questions never.”

“Heard,” I said. 

“Plus, what would you do once outside this door? Jump, and hope to learn to fly on the way down?” She laughed at her own joke, retreated and I heard the door click shut and lock. I figured I could still probably get out, but she was right– I didn’t really have a plan to escape. 

But then of course, escape was the last thing I wanted. 

This story is a part of the 100 Failures Project, a writing endeavor I started to push myself to write as much as I could in the last six months of 2024.

part two will be available soon. If you want to get notified when it releases… you know what to do.

Casino Eulogy

Casino Eulogy

by Lucas. X Wiseman

A harsh clack from the intercom interrupted the ruffling cards, the clinking chips, and the staccato tumble of dice. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that Franklin “Two Chip” Johannes has just passed away,” an elderly woman rasped over the speakers. “In honor of his life, and to remember the pair of Melange poker chips he always carried with him, we will observe two minutes of silence. Thank you.”

Around the high stakes table, the blackjack players huffed their frustration. The dealer put a single finger on the deck of cards in front of her, pursed her lips, and then leaned back and closed her eyes tight. The gamblers, used to the enormous rollicking noise of the casino, could not bear the quiet. They leaned together and whispered.

“The nerve of that woman,” the shrewd madame said. “Mourning him after what she did.”

The madame was made up of jangling jewelry and unsubtle allure, but her green eyes were hawkish.

“A man’s life should only be measured in dollars lost and lovers won.”

— Franklin "Two Chip" Johannes

“You know, I auditioned for Two Chip once,” murmured the starlet in the scarlet dress. “He went with someone older, didn’t want ‘a girl the same age as his daughter’ in a love scene. But I wouldn’t have minded.”

The starlet was a shimmering ruby, her eyes twinkling, nearly blinding in her brilliance. She drew the eye so completely that the middle-aged mobster beside her was barely perceivable, except as a hand on her thigh and a column of leathery pipe smoke.

“I knew him. Hard bastard, but fair too,” the mobster said, wagging his pipe to the other corner of his mouth. “Heard he got soft, that’s how his woman took this casino from him.”

“I heard those two chips he carried were all he had of this place, after,” the starlet said. “It’s almost romantic.”

“Or tragic. He used to sing at my establishment, before he got into the movies,” the madame said. “Always a gentleman to the girls he took home. Broke more than a few hearts, he did.”

“And now he’s dead,” the mobster said. “End of an era.”

Without ceremony the two minute mark passed, and the jumbled roar of chips, cards, and dice resumed. The dealer opened her eyes, and tears tumbled down.

“You know,” she said as she reshuffled the cards. “My dad was the one who got me this job. Quietly, of course. Different last names and all. He laughed, after; amused that I was still here but he wasn’t. I loved that he laughed, despite everything.”

She dealt the cards quickly and professionally, and the blackjack table became an oasis of quiet in the midst of a cacophony of avaricious glee. The dealer danced a pair of bright blue Melange chips across her knuckles and studied the players.

“You knew him in your own tiny ways, as a mob boss or a singer or a movie star, but you only held fragments of who he was. And I pity you for that. You’ll never know what you missed.”

---

Portrait of an Alien Overlord

by Lucas X. Wiseman

It is a frightening thing, to be hired to paint a monster. But when a nine foot tall alligator woman lands a ship in your peonies and asks for you by name, you depart with brush in hand. 

There’s an odd moment when you’re leaving Earth, where the horizon melts away and you can just barely make out the Moxon vessel. It is disk shaped and about the size of India, and I would have called it elegant if I hadn’t known what it had done.

“So, um. Who am I going to paint?” I asked my companion. She turned three of her eyes to me.

“The Fleet Master has seen your work, Lacie Pyron, and wishes a portrait. You will be compensated.”

“The Fleet Master is generous,” I said, making sure not to look her directly in the eyes. That was a challenge in Moxon culture. 

She grunted. “He is indulgent.” 

I nodded, trying not to offend. All the Moxon used translation collars to turn their native language into something understandable by humans. If you listened closely, you could hear their monosyllabic hisses beneath the English.

An hour later we landed and disembarked. My companion led me to an observation bulb that offered a generous view of the Earth below me. I looked around, a little surprised by the decor. Moxons favored a hunting lodge aesthetic, with trophies and weapons on display, the pelts of creatures used as rugs, and furniture that was made of leather, wood, and bone. And oil portraits, apparently.

“You will wait,” the pilot said. “Fleet Master will arrive soon. Set up your tools.”

I did so in silence. Outside the viewing window, the carcass of North America was just twisting into view. I shivered at the sight of the new American Sea, the thousands of new islands where there was once a single landmass. The blast from the Moxon ship had even shifted Earth’s orbit slightly, making our winters shorter and summers longer. The door opened behind me.

The Fleet Master was a smaller Moxon, only about eight feet tall, and his scales were a pale yellow. He was wearing almost nothing except a large belt with flaps of leather that covered his hips. He approached and raised his chin, exposing his throat in a traditional greeting.

“You are the painter Lacie Pyron,” he rumbled. His voice was deep and dark, and the monkey part of my brain trembled. 

I nodded, working up the courage to speak. “I am, exalted one. Thank you for choosing me to paint you. It is an honor.”

I gestured to the chair I’d set up in front of my canvas. “If you would sit?”

He regarded me for a moment, ignoring my request. Behind me, the doors opened again and a serving creature entered. It was a small, four legged thing that looked like a coffee table mixed with an orangutan, and it offered him a hunk of meat and a frosty mug. He took both, and waved the servant away. 

“You wonder why I asked for you,” the Fleet Master stated, finally seating himself. I gulped again, watching his double-rowed teeth tear into the meaty hunk as easily as I’d eat a soft roll. 

“I am curious, exalted one,” I said. “But it is not my place to ask questions.” He grunted at that, seemingly pleased. I took a deep breath to calm myself, then I looked at him.

---

I saw the six alien eyes that had pupils like a cat’s. The hulking skull, with a thick brow ridge and deep ruts. A thin scar that crossed his snout, barely visible now. The vestigial gills on the side of his neck, much like a human tailbone; a mark of what the Moxon once were. The downward slant of his mouth, the thin but supple lips. That Moxons could smile, frown, and sneer made them more frightening to me, not less. Their expressions were nearly human, and yet wholly alien. 

I took up my palette. I started with a sketch, using a thin brush and a dark evergreen paint, blocking in the basic shape of his face. He startled me by answering my unasked question. 

“I wanted you because your paintings are filled with feeling,” he said. I paused, taking a moment to mix more paint and gather my thoughts.

“Would you indulge your servant with an explanation?” I asked. On my pallet I scraped together yellow and green, trying to get the right tone for the color around his eyes; lighter than the rest of his scales. Those eyes pierced me, but I held them. It was disrespectful to do, but I needed to see him to do my work. He did not scold me.

“Every planet we domesticate, the sentients have art of some kind. Even that poor creature you saw a moment ago, its people were barely better than beasts, yet they used the flesh of a native fruit to make images on the stone walls of the tunnels they lived in. And on every planet, I find one who can make art of me.”

“You want to see yourself in the way that we see you,” I said slowly. 

He nodded. “Your species, for example, only two eyes. Small, no claws. What must I look like to you? I will know soon enough.” He turned to the window and continued eating, staring out at the planet he now owned.

I kept studying the Fleet Lord, focusing on the shape of his maw, the tiny spines that ran down his throat and into his wide, muscled chest. The Moxon relied on their advanced technology to dominate worlds, but their stature and heavily muscled bodies certainly helped. I used a dark brown tinted with blue to carve in the shadowed curve of his back and the thick, wide scales that covered his chest and arms. He was very still, moving only to lift his drink.

“Do you wish to see what I think you look like?” I asked, hesitantly. “Or my species?”

He shrugged, and I caught the rippling muscles beneath the scales, the sinuous twist of a shoulder wider than my hips. I made a quick mark on the canvas to highlight the power held in that round, hunched shape.

“Both. You are afraid; the air is tinged with the scent of it. Yet you are here, doing your work, in spite of fear,” he said. “I am curious, what do I look like to a creature like you? Others have hated me, or revered me. But your people fear, and yet you hope. Hope to be free of us, despite the gap in our technologies. Hope perhaps to beat us back, retake your planet, despite that cratered continent,” he said, gesturing carelessly to the planet below.

“I think we fear what you are capable of,” I said. “But I--”

He held up a claw. “Speak less,” he said. “Use your tools to tell. I wish to see, not hear.” 

I nodded, a little nugget of determination hardening in my belly. I was afraid, there wasn’t any doubt about that. But I was also angry. And indignant, and proud of my species, my people. We were more than fear. I nodded to myself. I’d show him.

It was hours later when I stepped back from the canvas, my back and feet aching, my eyes gritty. In all that time the Fleet Lord had held still, without complaining once. I regarded the canvas, and a tremor entered my heart. I had painted him, but it was not flattering, not indulgent. My painting verged on disrespect. A deadly offense to the Moxon. What had gotten the Americans killed. That, and the wave of ineffective nukes they’d fired at this ship.

“You are done,” he said. It wasn’t a question. He rose slowly, stretching out his large form, and approached with the slow grace of a predator. I took a step back, my mouth opening to offer an explanation for what I’d made, or perhaps an apology. But he raised a clawed hand. 

“I wish to see.”

He rounded the canvas. I held my breath.

---

I’d used the blue glow reflecting off of the Earth to light the Fleet Master. The lit side of him was jagged and hard, his scales a virulent yellow, his eyes glinting sharp, his claws tinged red from the meat he’d eaten, and the lives he’d taken. On this side, lit by the planet he conquered, he was fierce, undefeated, the Fleet Lord. 

His other side was in shadow, and I used swirling blues and purples to show him what else I saw in him. That his six eyes were haughty, but foolish: used to overlooking things that he thought beneath him. Here his scales were not backed with hard muscle, but with stilted fat, bulging from excess and ill use. His claw was relaxed, unprepared: weak and unready to defend him. And where the dark and the light met, in that moment of conflict, I’d painted a question. Which of these creatures would he be to me, to humanity?

He studied the painting for minutes in silence. My heart thundered, and I was surprised he didn’t choke on the fear my body must have been spewing out. I had painted what I felt, but now I saw in every brush stroke and color that this painting was a challenge. And the Fleet Master knew it. 

He turned to me, slow and deliberate, his claws clasped behind his back. The animal in me wanted to get away from him, to flee, to escape the danger. I held my ground, and met his six-eyed gaze.

He started to laugh. It was a crocodilian hiss, punctuated with his jaws snapping together. A shiss-shiss-shiss noise. He laughed, and I stood frozen, unsure what it meant.

“Yours is a spirited race,” he said finally. “Such defiance, in the stroke of a brush. I am pleased, Lacie Pyron. Thank you for this art.” 

He took it and carried it to a far wall, one draped with a large furry pelt. He pulled the skin aside, revealing a small room beyond. Inside were a dozen depictions of him, some painted, others sculpted; one that looked to be chiseled from bloody ice. He carried my work to an empty spot on the wall and hung it.

I followed him inside, amazed that the same being could be shown so differently. On one side he was a conquering hero; the other an avenging monster, and death on silent feet. Invader, oppressor, liberator, hero, master, murderer, and in the middle of them all: my painting.

I’d painted the Moxon Fleet Master as something mortal. Not a god here to save us, or an avenging angel to punish us: but a fellow sentient. A foe, a challenger to our supremacy, but not something evil. No: instead, a chance to grow beyond what we were. To ascend. My painting said that the Moxon were not gods or monsters. But perhaps one day, they would be our peers. 

I noticed the depictions seemed to be organized; the flattering ones on one side, the more monstrous on the other. Mine went in the middle.

“What happened to the species who made these?” I said, pointing at the portraits of him as a god-king.

“They serve us still,” he said. “Our claws broke their wills beyond repair. They could not pick themselves out of the dust.”

“And those?” I pointed at the ones where he was clearly a monster.

“All are extinct now. They could not abide servitude, but nor could they win. They died fighting. There is some honor in that, but not much.”

“And, in between?”

He smiled, and it seemed a much less frightening expression than it was before. 

“I see in these a multitude. The wisdom to see what is; and hope to see what could be. Something beautiful, and dangerous.”

“Like you, Fleet Master.” 

“And you, human.”
…..