Poor Man's Fight

Copyright
2013 Elliott Kay

Amazon Kindle
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Cover art by Desiree Kern

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For Mom.

“How much debt do you people carry?”

His question stunned
Aphrodite’s
assembled crew. The luxury liner had been at the mercy of this swaggering, self-assured man and his comrades for over an hour. In that time, not one of the crew imagined a pirate asking them how much money they
didn’t
have.

“Aw, c’mon now. This doesn’t work without some participation from the audience.” His gravelly yet cheerful voice dominated the room. Long, straight black hair hung down loosely past his shoulders. He wore no
eye patch, no tri-corner hat or prosthetic limb. Just loose clothes, heavy boots, a day’s worth of stubble and a pair of pistols. “There’s a reason we separated you out from the passengers.
You
guys don’t have to worry about being hurt or killed, long as you don’t do anything stupid.”

Faint echoes of crashes, screams and the occasional discharge of a weapon drifted into the ransacked ballroom through the walls and the vents as if to illustrate his point.
Aphrodite’s
649 shaken crewmembers—senior officers and much of the security staff conspicuously absent—remained speechless.

The crew vastly outnumbered the dozen or so pirates in the room, but none of
Aphrodite’s
people were armed. Only a small portion had any training or experience with firearms in the first place, and those few knew even better than the others what would happen if they tried to rush the pirates. Many of their captors bore military-grade weapons. The smoldering remains of several people in the port entryway attested to how poorly unarmored humans fared against pulse lasers.

“You there,” the pirate pointed. “Hong. No, don’t be so
shocked; I only know your name because it’s on your goddamn tag there. How much debt do you have?”

“Sixty… sixty-seven thousand,” answered Crewman Hong.

“Only 67k, and you look to be, what, twenty-five? Twenty-six? You had longevity treatments yet?” Hong shook his head, and the pirate gave a thoughtful frown. “Well, that’ll set you back a good ways, but still, four years is pretty good for your age. You must be conscientious about your payments. Maybe did well in school, too, right? Judging by your uniform, I’m guessing that 67 is a little less than four years’ income, right?
Only
four years. Shit, crazy as that is, you’re a bad example. Never mind.”

Hong blinked as the pirate captain shifted his attention. “How about you? In the dress? What do you do here?”

“I’m a hostess,” ventured a slender young blonde in glittering black and silver. “I run the b-ballroom here.”

“Hah. Sorry ‘bout the mess,” the pirate shrugged, glancing around at overturned tables and a
thoroughly emptied bar. “But then again, none of this shit belongs to you anyway, does it? You own any shares in this ship or the line?”

“N-no,” she shook her head.

“No, of course not. So it’s not like it’s actually yours, right? It’s the company’s. You ain’t responsible for this, so fuck it. Anyway, what’s your debt look like?”

Reluctantly, she glanced at her fellows—most of them in jumpsuits or ship’s uniforms—and admitted, “One seventy-six.”

The pirate whistled. “Maybe not so good in school.”

She tried to defend herself. “I had linguistics training!”

“Sure, sure. Hostess. Gotta talk to everybody. Good looks don’t always come cheap, either,” the pirate winked before pointing to another crewman. “You there! Oil stains! How much? C’mon now, how much debt?”

“Ninety-three thousand… sir,” the machinist’s mate answered nervously.

That got derisive laughs from the other pirates, who formed a loose circle around the edges of the ballroom. They all seemed relaxed, yet each of them held a weapon drawn and ready. Some drank from expensive bottles stolen from the bar.

“Don’t call me that, son. I’m a pirate. I’m the captain, sure, but nobody’s gotta kiss my ass. Not like your captain expects. Don’t call me ‘sir.’ Hell, don’t even call me ‘captain.’ My name’s
Casey.”

He placed one foot on the chair in front of him and leaned forward on his knee. His boots, certainly, looked pirate-like. One couldn’t help but notice the fresh blood atop the leather.

“All of
you
are going to live through this,” said Casey, “barring anyone doing anything stupid, of course. But you all did the sensible thing and didn’t resist once you couldn’t run—and I guess we can’t really blame you for running,” he admitted with a shrug. “That was your captain’s call, but well, fuck him.

“I’m here to offer you all a choice of your own free will. Maybe the first truly free choice of your lives. Might seem like there’s a gun to your head right now, but we aren’t
holding it.

“The people who really hold that gun have been there all your lives. NorthStar. CDC. Lai Wa. All those fucking corporations putting all those strings on you ever since you were a shocking disruption in momm
y’s menstrual cycle. Or a procreation request form, some of you. Those corporations wrote all the rules and they hold all the cards and you have nothing.

“They put you on your knees and keep you there. And then they go and make it
your fault
by dressing up all the shit you
need to live
as loans you have to pay back. Tell you that you
have
to go to school, and then stick you with the bill. Shoot you up with a hundred inoculations for shit that isn’t even around anymore and tell you ya can’t get a job without those vaccinations, and then they charge through the nose for that, too. Before you know it you owe money just for being alive. And then you owe money for owing money.

He pulled his foot off the seat and stood tall. “And that’s assuming you’ve made arrangements to live that long. Gotta have that gene therapy so you’ll live a nice, long life, ‘cause if you’re gonna be withered and elderly by seventy-five or eighty you sure as hell aren’t going to pay back the debts you rack up just making it
to twenty-five. Not that longevity’s the sort of thing you can pay for out of your pocket, so you owe for that, too.

“They’
ll never let you get out of debt,” Casey said gravely. “You know that, right? Why would they do something so stupid?” He left each sentence hanging in the air, looking from one pair of eyes to the next.

“Used to be, to enslave a person, you had to beat him constantly and take him far from home. Maybe kill a few other slaves in front of him to show what’d happen if he got lippy or tried to escape. Put him in chains. Keep him ignorant. Isolate him. Make him feel less than human. But look at you. Hell, they’ve got it wired so well now you think you’re free. You people are slaves and you don’t even know it.
They know better than to call it slavery. They just tell you that you owe them money and they set all the rules for how you can pay ‘em back.

“
So you get a job cleaning up after those rich slobs that were living it up in this ballroom just a couple hours ago. And the most you can hope for is to scrape together a few credits to buy yourself some sort of distracting entertainment or drug yourself into happiness for a few hours, because the rest of that money they pretend they’re paying you goes right back into dividends for the stockholders. Then you get up and do it again. And it’s never going to end…”

A pistol appeared in his hand, drawn in the blink of an eye from his hip. The move startled several crewmembers. Others managed not to show their alarm.

“Unless you pick up one of these, and you tell those fuckers, ‘No more.’ Tell ‘em you won’t play this game where you get no say in the rules. Tell ‘em you won’t follow laws when you didn’t get any say in ‘em. And give up all that fairy tale bullshit they’ve been feeding you where you’ll have your own home on a sunny planet and you have kids growing up healthy and free to choose their own way in life, ‘cause I’m telling you, it’s never going to happen.
They will never let you go, because there’s no money in it.
”

He paused to let it sink in, and then made his pitch.

“Everyone on our ship gets an equal share of loot and an equal vote. Do well and your shipmates may even vote you up for an extra share. Our chain of command is only for combat and shipboard emergency. Past that, we’re all one and the same. Shipboard rules all fit on a single page. No hazing bullshit. We don’t care who you fuck or whether or not you pray to whoever the hell you believe in. Anyone gets too hurt to go on, we make sure they get compensated.

“And you’re free to go whenever we hit a port, because we don’t want anyone who doesn’t want to be with us. We know people who can help you disappear. It’s affordable, and they’re honest enough that they want the money up front.

“It’s rough living. Quarters are cramped, and this crew isn’t exactly what you’d call culturally enriched. And there’s that whole criminal status thing.”

Casey paused to scan the crowd.
“I’m done. You’ve got one minute. If you want to join up, talk to one of these fine people with guns. Do it quick if you want to keep any property you have on this ship, because we won’t hold off looting crew’s quarters much longer.

“Oh,” he said, just as he turned to leave. “New recruits get a half-share each from this ship. Might want to consider how it’ll feel to have more assets than debts for once in your life.”

A pair of pirates joined Casey as he walked out of the ballroom. One was a blonde, petite and almost pretty, wearing knives and guns like they were jewelry. The other was a tall young man whose muscles spoke of a great deal of exercise and growth enhancers.

“How was that?”
Casey asked as they headed down the passageway.

“I think you’re still awfully wordy,”
Lauren said nonchalantly.

“You mix metaphors,” added Carl.

“I what?”

“You mix metaphors. You start talking about the idea of having a gun to their head and then you describe the corps as having strings in their backs, like puppets. And then you talk about playing a rigged game. You’ve got to pick one or the other. Unless you want them all to see themselves as puppets playing cards with guns to their heads, but that’s just stupid. Who shoots a puppet?”

The captain’s mouth fell open. “You know, I had teachers who talked like you in school. Pretty sure they’re what drove me to a life of crime.”

“I thought you were rebelling against the oppressive corporate plutocracy that disenfranchises and enslaves the working class?”

“Lauren, I’m gonna hit him.”

“Go ahead,” the blonde shrugged. She glanced up at Carl with a smirk. “This is why nobody wants to sit with you in the galley.”

Casey forgot about it. The three arrived at a series of offices, all warmly decorated to help wealthy passengers feel welcome. The bloodcurdling screams from within one office hampered the sense of hospitality. Standing outside the office stood a lone man, nervously gulping from a bottle of whiskey. Sweat beaded across his forehead. He looked up to Casey’s arrival with obvious partial relief.

“Takashi,”
Casey said, “what’s goin’ on? You okay?”

The other pirate opened his mouth to speak, but yet another anguished scream interrupted him. “It’s Turtle, boss,” Takashi said. “The guy’s just… Does he really have to do all this?”