NASTRAGULL: Pirates (41 page)

"I do know that there will be a major art auction in a day or two, and Zala always has a large dinner function for important guests and VIPs in general. I'm confident that Zoris will attend. Perhaps I can get you a few invitations; I doubt there will be any problem. However, if you were to purchase one of the more expensive art pieces, then you will be invited for sure. The only problem is that if she has made a chattel purchase, then she won't sell. She never does. You will have to take the girl by force."

"You mean I have to become a pirate to rescue one?"

"No, not at all!" Tota seemed shock. "Eating the flesh of sentient beings is considered cannibalism, no matter the cannibal's species, and as such it is illegal throughout the known universe. If she throws a Gormé dining party, then she will be considered an outlaw. She has been on my list for a very long time as one of the suspects in this whole affair—or should I say, conspiracy. Liberating one of her victims is heroism, not piracy, and will certainly be viewed as such."

"But first I have to prove that she's involved in cannibalism."

"Prove to whom? Your beloved Federation? Half the officials in your government are probably on her guest list. Alec, you're on your own if you want what you seek. Still, your name and your father's stature makes you more powerful than any Key Administrator, another reason I want to work with you. Remember, money can be a powerful persuader; how do you think these pirates can operate almost undisturbed? Why do you think there haven't been any Predators stationed here for years? Why else is there never an investigation when a cargo ship or transport cruiser like the one you and your friends were aboard just vanishes?"

"Natural causes? Equipment malfunction? Crew error?" Alec suggested ironically.

Tota snorted. "Oh yes, so the Key Administrators say. But then, they are the worse pirates in the sector; they might not do the looting, but they certainly benefit from it." His voice hardened. "Let's just form an allegiance, so that combined, we can destroy these vile creatures."

Alec had an inkling that, were he to get much more riled than he was now, Tota might transform from a soft-spoken angel to a hateful demon. He said soothingly, "If we're going to do this, then you need to stay calm, Mr. Tota."

"I can do that, my friend." Tota quickly returned to his original size and rotund shape. "Don't worry about me, Alec; I know how to fool a person or two. Who would ever suspect a short, fat elephant-man who keeps pissing in his pants whenever he's excited?"

They both burst into laughter. As Alec wiped his eyes, he said, "Mr. Tota, I've never been much into art. Will you be my broker? If I give you enough credits, can you make the purchase in my name through my trader?"

"Consider it done." Tota raised his glass in one final salute to Alec before drinking it down.

They spent the next few hours working out a plan on how to communicate with each other, and where and when to meet. Tota pointed out who, among those in power, was trustworthy and who wasn't; but he cautioned that no one could
really
be trusted, given the amount of money involved in piracy and the associated slave trade. He also let Alec in on a few secrets, and Alec took them in with great respect. He realized, for the first time, that there are many people just like Tota, those who wanted to see some justice and compensation for all the unfairness they faced on a daily basis. Whenever Tota returned to the subject of Alec once having been a slave, Alec quickly changed the subject. He didn't believe it—surely Tota was still referring to his time as a prisoner of the pirates—and the whole idea made him uneasy. Tota soon realized that, and  dropped the subject to Alec's relief. Alec brought up the problem of finding trustworthy crew, particularly spacers with combat experience, and Tota promised to see what he could do.

For hours they sat and talked, developing the beginning of a friendship. After several bottles of Tota's finest wine, Alec realized that his communicator didn't work inside the protected force field, and asked that it be lowered. When it was, he realized that he had over a dozen messages on his communicator. He left Tota's office quickly, to find Behl, Wolf and three of his other security people arguing with Tota's own security guards.

Chapter 25

The two-hundred-ship-long column began to decelerate as it approached New Frontier. Aboard the bridge of the lead ship, a huge intersystem fluids hauler once used to transport water, sat Horsa, leader of the Wulsatures Clan. He was staring into the instruments at the command station, scanning the Big Dark for any possible threat. "Where are the other columns?" he finally demanded.

His first Captain, Slasher, answered, "They should all be exiting from their respective jumpgates within the hour."

Horsa smiled grimly. This would be the greatest operation he and his clan had ever attempted; within a week or two, he would make history as no other pirate had ever done. Not only would he find the thief with his treasure map, but he would also punish the two weasels at New Frontier for not assisting his brother Zuzack. Not least, he would send a clear message to his so-called allies never to cross him.

Horsa leaned back in his command chair and read Zuzack's message over and over again. He had located the thief. Unfortunately, the thief had cashed in some of their hard earned booty, and begun spreading it around liberally. And astonishingly, there was no way to get the money back, not even from the thief! The sniveling Key Administrators, Tobbis and Zala, had excused themselves by informing Zuzack that the banking system had been designed to be impenetrable, the transactions irreversible save at the whim of both spender and receiver—and it was impossible to take the funds from the thief's account without permission. The best hackers in ten galaxies had tried for centuries and had yet to crack it. Actually Horsa knew this; he held accounts himself with both the Merchants and the Traders. It didn't matter who the customer happened to be; the rules were the same for everyone, and that's why both Nastasturus and Florencia kept large monetary reserves on hand with both mercantile groups. Their banking systems were nearly perfect, from a security perspective. 

But still, Horsa could not accept that
his money
was being spent by a shitty little Oman slave.

What he had planned was outrageously ambitious, but it was past time he did it anyway. Attacking a large space station like NF 16 was worth the trouble of recovering the map; and a little extra looting never hurt. That no one in their right mind had ever attacked one of these new space stations was something that never troubled Horsa's thoughts. And even if it had, the idea wouldn't have bothered the old pirate much. He was all but blinded by rage.

With over eight hundred ships and almost six million pirates deployed in three separate columns, Horsa felt confident that he could take on the entire universe. A convoy with hundreds of cargo vessels was nothing unusual in space nowadays, as safety in numbers protected against both pirates and being confiscated by one of the two large Federations. However, over eight hundred ships at once would certainly attract the suspicion of at least one of the  Federations.

While Horsa was going over his plan for the coming onslaught, he observed a monitor which showed a large destroyer-class vessel battening onto one of the docking arms attached to the hull of his ship. "Finally, Zuzack is here," he growled under his breath, combing his long white beard with his fingers.

A few minutes later, there was a faint sound behind him as the hatch opened. Horsa could smell his brother's distinct musk. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the moment; he loved the scent of true blood. The next thing Horsa noticed was the sudden silence among the crew working the bridge. It was eerie, and Horsa knew from years of experience that such was always a bad sign. He turned his seat and stood up to greet his brother; but his brother wasn't there. This was something else. Oddly, it smelled like Zuzack, and it moved like Zuzack, but it certainly didn't look like Zuzack. This...
thing
had the hairless, scarred skull of some monster out of a fairy tale.

Horsa glared at the creature standing in front of him. It had the odor of his brother and the shape of his brother and it also wore his brother's favorite uniform, but that head... The
creature's deformed face was streaked with blood and puss, and something squirted out of its eyes as it took a deep shaky breath.

And then it talked.

"Brother!
Look
at me! Look what it did to me! The little Oman bastard peeled the skin off my head, and then it
pissed
on me. My medical officer says there's no way I can be completely healed, ever, not even with cloning! The monster's DNA has corrupted mine!" Wailing his misery, Zuzack flung himself on Horsa, and began to cry on his shoulder like a little child. If you could call it crying, the way its—his—eyes were squirting.

As for Horsa, his eyes were about to pop out. He stared in disgust at the thing blubbering on his shoulder, ruining his jacket. He knew intellectually that it was Zuzack. No one had a voice quite like his brother's. Horsa had seen worse injuries, and on many occasions he had even inflicted them; he'd been known to skin his own enemies alive, hence the command chair back at his headquarters. But he always showed some mercy, and killed them after a while.

Uncomfortable, Horsa finally laid a hand on his brother's head. It took him a while before he could comfort his brother enough for him to speak again, and even then he had to school his face not to let his emotions show. A greenish gore dripped out from the pit where Zuzack's nose had been, and it left a nasty smear on Horsa's uniform. Horsa pushed his brother away, though not from anger at Zuzack. He grabbed hold of Zuzack's shoulders and whispered, "We shall have our vengeance. I guarantee it, brother." He then turned to his fellow officers on the command bridge while spinning Zuzack around so that he faced them. Then he shouted, "Revenge!"

For a long moment there was complete silence on the command bridge. No one dared to say or do anything.

Horsa turned to his disfigured brother with an icy look in his eyes. "First we shall skin it, and then we shall eat it. We will drink from its skull while we suck on its bones. This I swear to you, my beloved brother." Horsa placed his arm over Zuzack's shoulder and he escorted him away towards his quarters. The two of them needed to be alone so they could morn Zuzack's loss and pain.

***

A small scout ship followed Horsa's columns at a discreet distance. The pilot and navigator were members of the pirate clan that called themselves the Night-Hunters, and for the last week had been following developments with great interest while reporting back to their leader, Ogstafa.

Ogstafa had just risen to the throne, as it were, by  killing her own mother. She belonged more or less to the same saurian species as Myra, but she had no claim to pure blood; DNA from more than a dozen distinct races ran through her veins. She had an unnatural, Oman-like face scabbed by patches of scales that caused a horrible itch and rash. She was always in a foul mood as a result.

From the moment she had discovered that Horsa, her biggest competitor and nemesis, had ventured from his hideout with almost his entire clan in tow, Ogstafa knew that whatever he was up to, she surely wasn't going to miss out on it. She had summoned three more clans to join her: The Black Sun, The Red Knights, and the Sunrays
.
Ogstafa's coalition easily outnumbered Horsa's Wulsatures three to one. Though the clans hated each other, on rare occasions like this they would ally for a time. Currently, all four clans followed the development from different points in space, maintaining a safe distance from Horsa's convoy and, of course, from each other.

There was no trust between them, of course; you didn't trust a scorpion not to sting you, and of course they were all scorpions, and knew it. All were equally vicious and coldblooded. Like vultures flying towards injured but still dangerous prey, the two thousand ships of the four clans were cautiously closing in from all sides in the open neutral space near the Florencian border system of Handover. Each was electronically cloaked against detection by the dangerous
Federation's border patrols, and the crews used all their skills and talent to avoid a statistically-unlikely but nonetheless possible visual detection.

But even in the deep immensity of the Big Dark, it's impossible for almost three thousand ships to remain hidden for long. Many different types of "eyes" belonging to various governments and organizations observed the various pirate fleets with great interest, and even greater concern.

Most of the ships were camouflaged visually as civilian cargo haulers, so individually and even in groups they might not have attracted much attention; but their sheer numbers aroused suspicions, enough that the monitoring systems soon triggered alarms to their respective masters. One of those masters, and perhaps one of the first to become suspicious, was New Frontier's Coco Cabelle. It was her job to be paranoid, so when she coordinated the various reports and signals of large flotillas headed her way, red flags were raised in her mind. She compared the convoy numbers on the screen with the ones on a computer pad, and saw that several of them hade not made any requests to dock or trade. Scenarios ranging from passing convoys to a possible war passed through her mind and were assessed for probability. It didn't take long for her to order a yellow alert for the entire station and to schedule a general meeting for her staff. She also ordered all battle-ready corvettes and frigates owned by both trading groups to return to near-station space and take up defensive positions, an authority she had only in the event of imminent attack. Of course, none of the resident or visiting civilians would know anything about the security upgrade. Wasn't good for the trade.