Alexander Outland: Space Pirate (8 page)

“I was?”

“Yes. We want to hear whatever plan it is you have, and we want to hear it now.” Slinkie’s breasts wanted to hear the plan? Maybe I did have a shot.

“Oh. That. Right.”

“Nap, look at my eyes.”

“I am.”

“My eyes are in my head, you feather-brain!”

My ears told my eyes that pain was imminent unless my eyes obeyed. My eyes and I sighed and dragged up to Slinkie’s face.
Great face. Angry, but great. “Yes. I’m looking at your eyes.”

“Finally. The plan. What is it? I’d like to know before I kill you.”

“So, not telling you is in my best interests. Good to know.”

“Nap, you’re making me think that sticking with Bryant is the way to go.”

That worked. I spoke quickly. “Fine, fine. We’re going to act like we’re happy to be stuck on Herion tonight. We’re going to go out and see if anyone else tries to kill us or recruit us. Tomorrow, we’ll make our deal with the Business Bureau and find out what’s going on that the military didn’t tell us. Once we know what we’re dealing with, we make our escape accordingly, race off to Runilio, get the magma, race back to Ismaliz, get paid, do whatever we have to in order to get paid from the Herion Business Bureau, and then go to Libsuno and relax.”

I watched them process this. If I was lucky, no one would notice the key portion of the plan that was, for the moment, missing.

Slinkie, Randolph and Audrey all looked at me. “But how do we escape or destroy the armada?”

“That’s amazing. I’ve never heard the three of you talk in unison before. Have you been practicing?”

“No, but without asking I know we’re all ready to kill you.” Slinkie sounded serious.

The Governor sighed. “Until we know what we’re dealing with here, all that we’re dealing with, how in the galaxy do you expect Alexander to come up with a viable option? He’s given the outline, we all know how to work within it.” His voice shifted to peevish. “Now, I’m an old man, and I was promised a mineral bath. I want the nearest Herion equivalent or there will be some explaining to do.”

Slinkie sighed and held up a booklet. “I already looked, Governor. You have plenty of options, particularly now. I called the one I figured you’d want and made a reservation for you already.”

He beamed at her. “You’re so thoughtful, my dear.”

“No, I just hate hearing you whine.”

“Whatever works, my dear. Where and when?” Nothing nasty Slinkie said ever seemed to bother the Governor. Perhaps because, when it came down to it, he was going to get to cop his cheap feels again.

Slinkie sighed. “In an hour and yes, of course, I’ll take you. I’m going to have a bath, also. I need to relax. For some reason.” She gave me a dirty look, like this was all, somehow, my fault.

“I’ll go, too.”

“No, Alexander. I believe you should be giving the ship some attention and make sure it’s safe.”

“That would fall to Randolph and Audrey, wouldn’t it? As Chief Mechanic and, ah….” I stared at Audrey. What the hell were we going to say her title was?

“Copilot.” Audrey said this in her typical calm, cheerful way. I was going to have to sit next to her for the foreseeable future. I started praying she wasn’t going to think she had the right to get chatty. “I agree with the Captain. That would make the most sense.” I had to give her this—she was still the only one who gave me the remotest shred of respect and she was also helping me to go to the baths with Slinkie. Maybe having a Sexbot copilot would be all right after all.

“I suppose,” Randolph agreed. “What do you want us to say if someone comes and asks us what we’re doing?”

“Protecting our ship and not planning to leave any time soon.”

Randolph sighed. “I wish I could believe you were lying.”

“You know, have we ever not gotten off a planet? Ever? I mean, none of us have been in prison for any length of time, none of us have been kidnapped for any length of time, none of us have been left stranded for any length of time. I don’t see why everyone’s all doom and gloom.”

“Define what you mean by ‘length of time’,” Randolph said, a tad bitterly. “I remember being in prison, being a hostage, and being stranded. More than once.”

“And yet, here you are, alive, well, and with the right girl. Really,
is there just no pleasing you?”

“No,” Slinkie snapped. “There isn’t. Can we go to the baths now? I don’t want to be late for our reservation.”

“Sure. I’ll come along, see if they have an opening. And, if not, I’ll just bathe with you, Slink.”

She gave me a dirty look. “This place isn’t co-ed. I made sure when I booked it.”

“Guess I’ll just sneak around and stare at you from the shadows, then.”

“Like you do every time I bathe on the ship?”

Dang. She knew? I shrugged. “Then it’ll just be like every other day, won’t it?”

Slinkie sighed. “Why do I stay on your crew?”

“Because it’s hard to leave the best.”

“Lethargy and comfort zone,” Randolph suggested.

“Fear of the unknown,” the Governor offered.

“Because you like the Captain despite his many flaws.” I tried to focus on the positive portions of Audrey’s sentence, versus the “many flaws” portion. Reconsidered how much I was going to like sitting next to her. Maybe Randolph could install a Captain’s Mute Button.

“I don’t have many flaws! I have hardly any flaws!”

Slinkie shook her head. “Let’s go to the baths. I’ll list your flaws for you on the way, Nap. Trust me, I have them all memorized.”

T
he mineral baths on Herion couldn’t compete with those on Thurge, but for a non-volcanic planet, they weren’t bad. Sadly, Slinkie hadn’t been pretending—men and women were in separate areas, so I was stuck in the baths with the Governor.

I managed to enjoy myself anyway, because while the customers weren’t allowed to mingle, Herion wasn’t run by stupid people, and the attendants were female, quite attractive, and happy to see me. They seemed to like how I tipped, at least.

The Governor saw fit to give me a lecture as we finished dressing. “Alexander, how does your having, ah, sexual relations with each of the female bath attendants equate with your desire to land Miss Slinkie on a permanent basis?”

“Boy, are you old. I mean older than even I think you are, apparently.”

“And you’re stupider than I think you are, apparently.”

I shrugged. “Slinkie either will or won’t come around. I don’t think I need to become an Athriall monk in order to get her to see reason.”

“No, but you might not want to make her worry that by touching you she’s open to every venereal disease in the galaxy.”

“I take precautions. No diseases, no little Nappies running
around. I have a perfect record, too.” I looked at him out of the corner of my eyes. “Why the sudden focus on the me and Slinkie idea?”

“Oh, no reason.” He was lying, and not trying to hide it. Meaning there was a reason, but he wasn’t going to tell me, just wanted me thinking about it. Not for the first time, I wondered why I’d left Great-Aunt Clara behind only to be saddled with her male counterpart.

We left the men’s side to find Slinkie waiting for us, looking extremely bored and annoyed. I got the vulture-glare. Not good. Presumably, she’d figured out why we were delayed. “I think I’m going to take Bryant up on whatever he offers me tomorrow night.”

I gave her my patented “guilty boy you can’t resist” smile. “Aw, c’mon, Slinkie. You know the difference between distraction and infatuation.”

She snorted as she stood. “Right, Nap. You’re infatuated with being distracted.” She strode out. The positive was she looked amazing from behind when she walked like this. I chose to focus on said positive.

I didn’t get to focus on it too long. As Slinkie reached the street, an autofloater skidded next to her, tires screeching. A door opened, and someone pulled her into the vehicle. I heard her scream my name, right before the door slammed.

Pilots have quick reflexes, and I was the best pilot in the galaxy. I didn’t think, I just ran and jumped onto the back of the ’floater before it got away. This was an older model, so there was a passenger board all the way around and a decorative hold-bar on the roof—these had been popular a couple of decades prior, when someone had thought it was a good idea for people to have their families stand on the outside of an ugly, moving, box-like thing. Stupid on the streets. Moronic in the air.

Happily, I had a good hold on the bar and got decent footing on the passenger board. Sadly, the driver realized I was on the ’floater and went airborne.

The windows were tinted, but I was pretty sure I saw a lot of movement. The ’floater was certainly rocking more than it should be, even while in the air. I figured Slinkie was showing why no one was ever going to force her to do anything she didn’t want to do without a huge fight and the potential that they may never be able to have children.

However, the driver seemed to want to get rid of me. At least, I assumed that was why he flipped the car. I didn’t fall off, thanks to that decorative bar, but I decided getting inside might be a good idea. Naturally, the doors were locked. But I had my laser gun and I was pretty sure Slinkie wasn’t in the front seat.

I shot at the front passenger’s window. Thankfully I’d shot at an angle, because the laser shot ricocheted off. Laser-proofing was expensive. I figured the Business Bureau wanted insurance in the form of my girl. Well, my soon-to-be girl. Okay, my maybe-one-day girl. But still, she was mine, one way or the other.

I holstered my laser gun and moved around the passenger board. If I couldn’t shoot them, they couldn’t shoot me. While I moved, I questioned why the Business Bureau was using an ancient autofloater. Maybe they liked to keep a low profile. Or maybe it wasn’t the BB after all.

The driver tried flipping me off again. Like before it didn’t work, but it did cause me to fall across the windshield. It wasn’t as tinted as the rest of the windows, and I could see three men besides the driver. Like all of Herion’s males, they were larger than me. Slinkie was doing a great job of kicking and hitting the crap out of them, but one of them landed a good uppercut and I saw her go over and down.

One thing I’d never felt Great-Aunt Clara was wrong about was men who hit women. She felt they deserved to die. I agreed, especially when they hit my woman. I couldn’t get in there to beat the crap out of them in return, but I could do something much worse.

I moved to the front of the ’floater. Older models like this had failsafes, and I knew where they were. I kicked the front grill at the
emergency release point and the hood flew up. Searched around, yep, it was an engine all right. I didn’t want us crashing to the ground, but I wanted us going down. Found the helium-reactor and hit the emergency overload switch.

The ’floater shuddered and coughed. Good. I looked over my shoulder. We weren’t heading anywhere comforting. There were buildings around us and nothing all that soft under us. And, since I had the hood up, the driver couldn’t see. We were flying towards what appeared to be a sewage processing plant—the huge vats of stuff that looked fetid from up here, the many tubes running in between, the high and thick external walls, and total lack of other businesses surrounding this plant made it a good guess.

I considered the dilemma. Seemed to be only one option, really.

I
left the hood up and moved around to the driver’s side. He chose to open his door, marking him as an idiot. But that was good. I’d been planning to kick in the back window and drag Slinkie out before we crashed. Not the greatest plan in the world. A door open made things much simpler.

He fired, I dodged. Wasn’t hard. His aim was poor—apparently it was hard to drive an out-of-control ’floater and shoot the good guy at the same time.

I grabbed the door before he could close it, pulled my laser gun, and fired. Missed the driver, got the passenger. In the head. One down, three goons to go. From what I could tell, Slinkie was still out.

The driver flipped the car while he and I continued to fire at each other. He missed again, possibly because I’d lost my footing and was holding onto the car via the door handle. He leaned out to aim better. I holstered my gun, flung my arm up, and grabbed his arm just before he fired. His shot missed and he was off-balance enough that I pulled him out of the ’floater.

I heard male voices shouting, but couldn’t pay much attention. The driver still had a hold of the wheel, meaning the ’floater was spinning in the air while heading, from the quick flash I saw,
straight for the main sewage vat. I could smell it now, and I knew we’d land in it—it was just the way the cosmos worked.

I had the worse position, so I decided to try reckless as my next option. I grabbed the driver and climbed up his body. He tried to stop me, but I landed a good kick on his hand and his laser gun went flying off. He was bigger than me, weren’t they all here, but I was more agile and I had the desire to sleep with Slinkie spurring me on. Can’t sleep with dead girls—well, some can, but I’d never been one of them and didn’t plan on starting now.

Grabbed the wheel, made sure I had a firm hold, and then I slammed my elbow into the driver’s face. It took a couple of hits, but fighting fair wasn’t something I’d ever believed in. So I kneed his groin—hard—while I hit him with my elbow again. He lost his hold on the wheel and started to slide down. My elbow hit the top of his head while my knee met his nose. He let go and I stopped worrying about him.

Climbed in when the car spun around to help me. The positive about the car spinning was that the two remaining goons were too busy flipping around the car to shoot at me. I turned the wheel the other direction, took the laser gun the dead passenger wasn’t using any more, and waited for the goons to settle for a second. Two shots to the head, two dead goons. It was a cheerful afternoon for me.