This is, possibly, part on of an ongoing serialisation derived from something I’ve already written. The plan is to put a new part up every Tuesday so feel free to like it, or follow the blog, if you want to see more. You can find all parts here.
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“Captain?”
Murat was in bed when the heavy thuds fell on his door. By the ship’s clock it was some time in the afternoon on their ninth day hanging vacantly in space but for the life of him he couldn’t think of a good reason to get up.
There was more knocking on the door to his quarters. Pulling the blanket up over his head he did his level best to ignore it but as it grew more insistant and he found himself more and more awake until it became clear that he wasn’t just going to be allowed to drift back off.
“CAPTAIN!”
Rolling out of bed with an unhappy grunt, still in his faux-uniform from the night before, he stumbled over to the bulkhead and swung it open.
“What?”
“The ship, it’s here.”
Momentarily phased Murat stared blankly at Ecce, his second-in-command and perhaps the only member of the crew to retain any vague faith in him. She was young, she didn’t know any better he’d concluded, she’d learn to drop that soon enough.
“What ship?”
“The ship captain, the Neftech one. They’re not sending out an ID signal but it’s them alright, their design, no weapons, just a cargo ship.”
‘Shit’, was Murat’s first thought. He’d reached the point of zero expectation a few days ago, anything more demanding than lying in bed feeling sorry for himself was an unwelcome interruption. Ecce was staring at him though, eyes full of nervous expectation. She was like that, enthusiastic, efficient, a complete mismatch with the rest of the crew. She’d even had her own uniform made. It was black, had epulets and made Murat look like he should be cleaning out the drainage systems while she ran the ship. At times like this it made him feel that he should being doing that too.
“Erm, ok, lock the missiles on, I’ll be right up to talk to them. Don’t fire, just make sure they know we’re here.”
Weaponless cargo ships on covert missions were the worst type, in Murat’s opinion, they were bound to be up to no good, and Ecce was just the sort to get carried away and start shooting. It came from being brought up on the Platforms, that unnecessary sense of romanticism. Planet-siders were pessimists, happy to have escaped but certain in their pessimism that bad things were only ever a wrong step away. The natives of 323 were the same, caught as they were at the nexus of illicit activities among the Platforms; cynicism came easy to them. But Ecce was from a hydroponic station where solidly built kids were raised to lift things, shift drums of chemicals and take undue pride in being ‘red hands’ rather than worrying about the fact that the nutrient additives they spent their lives amongst were changing the colour of their skin. To everyone else it was a bizarre rural affectation for people who lived on a space station, but they grew the food, albeit in large plastic irrigation frames, so they could do what they liked. To go from that to 323, or piracy meant either a secret shame that the folks back home viewed as so scurrilous as to bar you from civil society, even if no one else gave a damn. Or a streak of romanticism so wide that you could still pretend, or even believe, that you were living the dream after 9 days of floating around pointlessly in a steel can surrounded by admittedly high functioning drunks, drug addicts, reprobates and failures. Ecce had the latter and despite keeping an eye on her Murat had never gotten the sense that it was faked.
Sharply clicking her heels together Murat watched as she strode off down the claustrophobic gangway which led to the command room before stepping back into his room and squaring up to the few inches of mirror which hung from the wall. Which quickly confirmed that he looked like crap, in a jumpsuit that had gone unwashed for a week and with a face that would have made a bloodhound suggest a nice lie down and a few days off. His mess of black hair had picked up a few greys, as had the ramshackle beard his aesthetic indifference had fuelled. A couple of scars above his eye and across his chin stood out too, mementos of his fighting past. He used to look military. Clean-shaven, cropped hair, rigid bearing – he still could do, he reckoned, he just needed a good run up to respectability, but there was no time for that. Instead a few tentative slaps to the face and a hand run through his hair would have to do. The creases in his makeshift uniform would flatten out and his tired brown eyes would look less bloodshot after a coffee or two. He’d have preferred a vodka to take the edge off but the drink free policy on the ship was his own idea even if he was the only one who ever adhered to it. The crew more than happy to operate a few tonnes of spaceship whilst completely battered on un-named ‘alcohol’ and whatever illicit chemicals they’d managed to pack.
There was no point dwelling on any of it though, there was a ship waiting and self-doubts aside, he was a Pirate. He’d learnt from the best, or at least the slightly above average and even if it had been failure all the way for a long time now success wasn’t wholly beyond his capabilities. With a grunt of self-assurance he left his quarters and headed to work.
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For more from me you can check out my novel Crashed America – available in paperback and digital formats. Or you can try any of my other work here – variously available as ebooks or paperbacks.