Alexander Outland: Space Pirate (34 page)

“Yes, so we can start cataloguing.” The Governor was back to his translations. I’d never realized all I needed to get to keep him occupied and quiet was a puzzle book. Good to know for the future. If we had one.

“Fine. Hulky, let’s move to that safe and hidden area.” I got the schematic flash that meant affirmative. Wandered back to the cockpit. Slinkie came with me. Sadly, so did Lionside.

“Do you need a copilot?” Lionside asked.

“Rarely if ever, and certainly not to do this, thanks for asking.”

“No need to get defensive. I do know how to pilot. Not up to your reputed skills, but enough to get by if needed.”

“Good to know.” I planned to never need it.

“You still want to go steal a ship?” Slinkie didn’t sound against the idea.

“Not sure. If Randolph can do whatever it is he does with that matter-shifter, then we might not have to.”

“Think he’ll be able to?” Lionside asked as he seated himself in the copilot’s seat.

“If anyone can, Randolph can. Lionside, why do you think I’m going to okay your taking Audrey’s seat?”

“I don’t. I’d like to know what your plan is, beyond our leaving the women planetside and hoping the pirate armada doesn’t notice.”

“Bryant has a point.”

“You too? Okay, fine. We have something with us the pirates want.”

“The
Sixty-Nine
,” Slinkie offered.

“You,” Lionside suggested.

“Information about who actually killed Lucky Pierre, Senior.”

They were both quiet. “What kind of information?” Slinkie asked finally.

“The kind offspring with a grudge are interested in. They do want the
Sixty-Nine
. I doubt they want me. But Nitin was trying to make me think they wanted me. So, they want me where they can see me.”

“How do you figure?” Lionside sounded like he was thinking again.

“Nitin didn’t kill me when he had the easy chance. It’s not like
someone else can’t fly the
Sixty-Nine
. If all they wanted was my ship, have one of Nitin’s goons fly it, or have one of Lucky P’s boys sneak in and fly it out. But I’m still amazingly alive. And Nitin’s plan was to get me into solarspace and hooked up with the armada pronto.”

“Why? I thought he wanted Audrey?” Slinkie sounded confused.

“Nitin does, yeah. But I think he’s working on his own plan, that maybe his other family members don’t know about.”

“Or they want Audrey, too,” Lionside said.

“Possible. We don’t know enough to make a confident guess. However, we do know they want the
Sixty-Nine
without any question. So, I don’t want to give her to them. We also know the moment they identify who Slinkie really is, they’ll realize they have the best living cargo in the galaxy. Slinkie’ll be back on Aviatus and married off to the Creature from the Aqueesis Depths and the armada will have moved successfully into Aviatian solarspace.”

“That would be very bad.”

“Thank you for stating the obvious, Lionside. Don’t you have a job to do?”

“You put me in charge of communications. No one to communicate with at the moment, other than you and the rest of the crew. I’d be happy to discuss Aviatian politics with Slinkie.”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. Baiting me, for sure. But willing, should I be stupid. “No, feel free to stay here and annoy me.”

He grinned. “Thought so.”

“Flattering as this is, what’s the rest of your plan, Nap? I don’t like the idea of cowering, and you know it.”

“I don’t want you cowering. I want you monitoring. I’m sure something’s going to go wrong and I’m going to be screaming for you. I just want you to be sure when it’s real screaming versus when it’s fake screaming.”

“You can fake scream?” Lionside asked.

“Women do it all the time,” Slinkie said with far too much laughter in her tone.

“Never to me, Slink. Never to me.”

F
ound the hiding spot Hulky had picked out. Had to give the program credit—no one was going to spot us visually.

We were at the bottom of a deep canyon, under a huge overhang of solid rock, with a variety of jutting rocks and stones piled randomly in front of the entrance. They still left enough room to maneuver, but no one would think this was a landing area under a normal visual scan.

The overhang and cave area had some kind of natural metal in it. Once hidden, the
Sixty-Nine
’s scanners reacted as if we were in a bizarre electromagnetic field, so we felt confident the metal would confuse other scanners enough that we could hide here and not be detected by the majority of electronics. Hulky’s scanning, however, had no issues with the area, which was why we found the cave and could see what was around us.

According to both the Governor and Lionside, the Hulkinator had been the only Herion ship equipped with this kind of scanning system. It was antiquated and the consensus was if Nitin was going to steal Herion military secrets, he’d have chosen something flashier, newer and a whole lot more impressive sounding. They always sold me short, too. My affection for Hulky and his talents grew.

Randolph’s voice came through the com. “Nap, I think we can
replicate it. The metals in the rocks where we are happen to be very rare, and they’re what’s used in this matter-shifter.”

“Good. How fast?”

“Because Audrey’s fully functional, very fast.” His voice vibrated with possessive pride. I really hoped he’d made her susceptible to flattery, because there were times I was with Slinkie and didn’t buy Audrey’s protestations that she would never look to trade up.

“Make it so. How do we safely test it?”

“Needs a human test, Nap. Non-organic and non-sentient matter can be moved with them, but in order to work them properly, it needs someone to set coordinates and such. It doesn’t respond to Audrey like it responds to me, so she can’t be the tester.”

“No problem. Lionside’s volunteered. Good man.”

“Thanks, Outland,” Lionside said. “But, realistically, I’m the best choice for the job.”

I looked. Nope, he wasn’t being sarcastic. “Want to explain your thinking?”

He shrugged. “You’re the captain and the crux of the plan and the pirate’s focus. Can’t risk something going wrong with you. Randolph and Audrey are too vital to the ship’s functioning. The Governor’s too old. Young Tanner has important skills that shouldn’t be risked. Slinkie has both necessary skills and is also the last person in the galaxy you, personally, want to risk, a sentiment I agree with. That pretty much leaves me. I also happen to be military, well, former military now. I’m trained to handle things when they go wrong. I’m big, I’m strong, and I’m willing to kill someone if I have to.”

“You know, I hate to say this, but I like how you think. Tell me—were you at all happy in Herion Military?”

He was quiet for a few long moments. “No. Not so much.”

I knew it. He wasn’t getting off-ship once we defeated the armada. Oh well, I’d adjust once I knew if we were going to live longer than tomorrow. “Randolph, how long before we have a test model?”

“Ready now, Captain.” Audrey shoved into the cockpit, what looked like the necklace I’d taken from Nitin in her hand. “While it looks like one ring of metal around the milky stone, there are really five rings. You manipulate them to move where you want and with whatever you want going along with you.”

She described what went where and why. Seemed easy enough. “So it’s somewhat thought-based?”

“Yes. The stone pulls your thoughts in and then the metal components shift your matter to your desired location.”

“You don’t find that fuzzy or funny?”

“No, Captain. There are many things that work like this. You just don’t realize it.”

“Take your word on it, Audrey. I don’t want the rundown now.” Lionside took the matter-shifter and put it around his neck. As he did, I noticed something. “Where did we get another leather strap?”

Audrey cleared her throat. I didn’t know Sexbots could do that. Randolph did engineer well. “It was easier to, ah, clone a duplicate than build from scratch.”

That sat on the air for a few long moments. “We can clone things?”

“I can clone things, yes.” She seemed embarrassed. “It’s how I would… create progeny.”

“Randolph set you up so that you can have children?” I was back to adding into the Book of Randolph.

“Yes, Captain. I look forward to it.”

“They’ll come out little or big?” I didn’t know why I was asking. I truly didn’t want to know—the images in my mind were somewhat horrifying.

“I can adjust the cloning process. For children, little. For something like this, fully formed and ready to go.”

I looked at Lionside. He nodded. “No wonder Nitin wanted Audrey.”

“How did he know, though? Randolph, how did you come up
with all of Audrey’s many bells and whistles?”

“Oh, well, some of them I did myself, Nap. But there’s an underground manual from a couple of centuries ago, and I have a copy. There are only three in existence. It takes a strong engineering aptitude to be able to understand, let alone create, from it.”

“A manual? What’s the title and who’s the author? And how did you get one of the only copies available?”

“It’s
Build a Better Robot
by Larry Isaacs. Most of the copies were destroyed during the Omnimus Overthrow of twenty-two-twenty-five. The legend has it that three Athriall monks took one copy each and hid them in the far reaches of the galaxy, so the Omnimuns couldn’t stomp out all cloning.”

Interesting theory. Not sure I bought into it, especially since something like this would be hugely valuable and, therefore, I’d think as a pirate I’d have heard of it. “How’d you get one of the three copies?”

“I won it during a poker game.”

“I beat you at poker. All the time.”

“Yeah, but you’re the best player around. I’ve been playing against you a long time. I’ve managed to pick something up.” He sounded both insulted and accusatory.

“Fine, whatever. Who’d you win it from?”

“Some guy named Peter Chance.”

T
he silence was awe-inspiring. I tried to think of what to say.

“You’re an idiot” seemed so right and yet so likely to cause an argument we didn’t have time for. “Do you know how to translate names at all?” was another one, probable same outcome. “Why me, oh Active Gods, why me?” seemed to cover it.

Slinkie recovered faster than me. “Randolph, how long ago and how old was this Peter Chance?”

“A few years ago. I think you’d just joined up with us, Slinkie, might have even been before.”

“You won one of the most rare books in the galaxy and you don’t remember when it happened?” Lionside sounded like he was channeling every prisoner interrogation he’d ever done.

“I’ve had it a while. So what?”

“This Chance guy, how old was he?”

“Older than me. Not old enough to be my father, but close.”

“So, Junior had it on him and lost it. No wonder the second generation didn’t do anything—they were led by an idiot.” Anyone who put up a rarity of this magnitude as a poker stake was, in my book, automatically a moron.

“What do you mean?” Randolph sounded confused. Of course. We were talking about the obvious, politics, and familial
succession. Naturally he was floating in space without a lifeline.

“I mean you won this from Lucky Pierre’s son. Audrey will explain it to you later. Right now, we have bigger problems.”

“So, they want the ship, they want Audrey, they want the guy who can make more Audreys, they want the manual.” Slinkie sounded ill.

“And, the moment they see you, they’ll want you too, Slink. Probably Tanner, if they figure out he’s got telepathic skills. Hell, why not take Mister Name of Kings? For all we know, they’ll see a way to use you, too, Lionside.”

“Potentially.” He sighed. “We still need to test this.” He pointed to the matter-shifter around his neck.

I opened my mouth but shut it again. Hulky was flashing a picture of the Trennile solar system. And there were a dozen little dots flying around it. I thought fast. “Lionside, give me that necklace for a moment. Audrey, how many clones have you made?”

“Just the one so far, Captain.”

“And, how many people can this one transport, besides the wearer?”

“Without testing it, I’d say no more than one. The range could be better, but we haven’t had time to verify.”

“Uh huh.” Not a surprise. I knew how my luck ran. “Show me again how I would work this to get onto the flagship of the oncoming fleet.”

She fiddled with it. “It’s set now, Captain. You’d put it to your forehead and focus on your destination.”

Hulky flashed a dot at me urgently. I marked where it was in relation to the planets and other vessels. “Thanks, big guy. How would I get back?”

“Same thing, Captain. It’s set for a round trip, if you will.”

“Seems so easy.” I doubted it would be in reality. I got up, put the necklace on, and wandered out of the cockpit. The others trailed after me. “Governor, need you for a moment.”

He looked up. “Yes?”

“I need you to stand up and come over to me. Just for a minute.”

Got the martyred sigh, but he did as I asked. “What’s this about, Alexander? Tanner and I were about to start the cross-referencing.”

“It’ll wait.” I put my arm around his shoulders. “Slink, you’re in charge. Get us when you should get us—you’ll know when.” I slapped the pendant to my forehead and thought about heading to the last place I really wanted to go. I heard a variety of shouts and protests from the crew, but the shifter worked quickly and they faded from view fast.

It seemed to work. The positive was that I still had the Governor with me and I managed to slide the matter-shifter under my shirt while we were moving. The negative was that no one had mentioned that matter-shifting was hard on the body, the mind, and most importantly, the stomach.