The Space Pirate 1
Read The Space Pirate 1 Online
Authors: George Lambert
The Space Pirate
The Space Pirate Chronicles Book 2
George Lambert
Copyright
©
2015 Blue Orchid Books
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual places is purely coincidental.
Not recommended for younger readers.
Also by Blue Orchid Books:
AEGIS COLONY:
The Sands of Osiris (Book 1)
http://www.amazon.com/Sands-Osiris-Aegis-Colony-ebook/dp/B00SRGECZS
The Jungles of Verdano
http://www.amazon.com/The-Jungles-Verdano-Aegis-Colony-ebook/dp/B0158SLBEC
The Ice of Solitude
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ice-Solitude-Aegis-Colony-ebook/dp/B0179O73ZO
THE SPACE PIRATE CHRONICLES:
The Space Pirate (Book 1)
http://www.amazon.com/Space-Pirate-Rags---Riches-Saga-ebook/dp/B01895UW0K
The Pirate Captain (Book 2)
http://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Captain-Rags---Riches-Saga-ebook/dp/B0190IYZBC
The Pirate Commander (Book 3)
http://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Commander-Space-Chronicles-Book-ebook/dp/B019S3IXNK
THE FLUX AGE:
The Lycan Society (Book 1)
http://www.amazon.com/Lycan-Society-Flux-Age-Book-ebook/dp/B0129QVD4E
1
Sandflower Downs was a real dump. Even by galaxy standards. It consisted of one main street and several goat tracks that wound their way through low, dusty mounds scattered with garbage. The most common dwelling at Sandflower Downs was the humble tin shack. The people here were poor, dirt poor. There were no jobs, no prospects. There were civilian deaths every day but there was nothing the local authority could do about it. Resources were stretched thin right across the planet.
Abeyas had the unwanted distinction of making the ‘ten least desirable planets’ list in the Intergalactic Financial Review. The dust bowl simply had nothing to offer - no resources, no technology, no local attractions. The Human Empire had colonized the yellow Class C planet in the hope of one day building a training facility for its space marines. The military school never got off the ground and what was left was a population of vagrants, hustlers, scumbags and simple poor folk.
In the scheme of things, Sandflower Downs was quite low in the food chain of Abeyas. It was really just a garbage storage facility with a hundred shacks surrounding it like a tumor. Boss Pete was the only remotely well-off man in town. He ran the garbage disposal compound and kept a reasonably tidy white stucco mansion there.
The rest of Sandflower kicked and fought for whatever scraps came their way. If you couldn’t get a gig as bodyguard for Boss Pete then you were really nowhere.
Charley Walker was one such young woman on the road to nowhere. She lived on the edge of town in a small shack with her six brothers and her mother.
Today she was more frustrated than usual as she kicked rocks on the dusty track that weaved through people’s huts.
You see, her mother had a system. She sent her children out at the crack of dawn every day to earn themselves a roof over their heads that night. She didn’t care how they got their credit bits - they just needed to do it or they were out in the cold. And boy did it ever get cold in Sandflower Downs. It was basically a desert town!
Dusk was settling in and Charley could see the winking purple lights of Boss Pete’s satellite array. Oh, how she wished she could work for Boss Pete and have access to television and virtual reality games! Cold beer and billiards! She’d often looked through the electric fence at the garbage disposal compound and wished she was on the other side. She sometimes stayed so long a bodyguard would come along and tell her to fuck off in no uncertain terms. She would usually scamper away and just look from another side, but she was getting too old to waste time dreaming now. She had just turned eighteen, not that anyone had celebrated with her. Her mother had punched her in the face and increased the amount she was expected to bring home every day. Her favorite saying was “There are mountains of credits out there if you learn where to look.” Charley only saw mountains of garbage, a flat, dry desert, and a distant mountain range where it was said sand people lived. But that was surely just a myth.
Charley hesitated as she reached the worn path that lead to her family’s shack. She didn’t have any credits to show for her day’s work. She’d scored two bits from a fresh corpse over by the old gas station but Phil Horley’s gang had stripped it off her. She was lucky she hadn’t been beaten up as well. It was a good idea to have a gang in Sandflower Downs. Most of her brothers were in a gang. They had never asked Charley to join but she suspected they might let her if she wanted to. But that was the thing - she didn’t want to. She wanted to make her own way. All she saw in gangs were too many reasons to share wealth. She was a smart girl, or so she liked to tell herself. Why would she want to share her wealth with anyone? Sure, gangs offered protection, but Charley wanted to one day buy her own protection. Ah, it was just a pipe dream. All she had was her dusty shift, which fast becoming too small.
She rapped on the door. Her mother always insisted on that. Her face darkened when she saw who it was.
“Well?” she barked. “How many credits today?”
Charley almost smiled at her mother. She might’ve been pretty once, but years in this shit hole had worn her down. She wore a grimy apron and her figure had really blown out. Still, there were traces of beauty in those high cheekbones and green eyes. Charley was sorry she had to endure a life of such squalor. Such was the way of Sandflower Downs. There weren’t many rich folks on Abeyas and they certainly weren’t anywhere near Charley.
“Found a nice stash,” Charley lied. “It’s time for dinner, mom.”
Anna’s eyes gleamed. The prospect of money soothed her. “Come in, daughter.”
2
Charley was glad to finally find shade after another day out on the flats trying to scrounge a living. She stepped into the hovel and saw that her brothers had already returned from their various activities. Hodge was the oldest, grizzled and experienced. Then came Bruce, Trink, Rev, Doce and Sarge. Sarge was the youngest son and not much older than Charley. He earned his nickname from constantly dreaming about joining the Abeyas Navy. Yeah, right.
“Sis,” Doce rumbled as he made way for Charley at the table. Charley’s huge, bear-like brother was about to dole out some of the gruel from the pot when a hand closed around his wrist - it was Anna, her fiery eyes locked on Charley.
“Like you said, you found a stash today,” she said. “You feel like adding it to the pile? Paying for dinner?”
Silence fell over the table as Charley stood and walked over to the little table where her brother had deposited their takings for the day. Her hand trembled in anticipation of what she was about to do. Her friend Stevie had once showed her a sleight of hand trick that gave the illusion of dropping something. Heart firmly in her mouth, her hand whipped out and flicked at a credit tube already on the table. It was a desperate, nervous attempt at fooling her mom and it wasn’t gonna wash. Not at all.
With dread spreading across her chest, Charley turned and looked at Anna. There was anger in those eyes. Anger and resignation. Charley didn’t like that second bit. It meant that Anna might just have given up on her.
“Sons,” Anna announced, turning to her boys as they sat poised around the family table. “I run a tight ship and you all know the rules. I never said life was easy here in Sandflower Downs. But we manage. I built this place on the back of extreme pain and humiliation. I built this place so we could all have a place to survive. But none of it works when you don’t pay your way. This planet is all about paying your own way. If you can’t do that, you’re worse than useless. You’re dead. And as we all know, the smell of the dead is infectious. It brings us all down.”
Trembling with rage, Anna turned to her one and only daughter.
“For turning up with nothing in your pockets, I would’ve given you a week,” she snarled. “For trying to trick me, you’re out for good. Don’t come back. Whore.”
The words slapped Charley hard. She knew her mother was stressed out but this was out of control. She knew Anna was seeing a new man, one of Boss Pete’s garbage men. Maybe that slimeball was getting into her ear about all the mouths she had to feed. Who knew what went through her mother’s mind anymore?
Determined not to cry in front of her brothers and especially not in front of her mother, Charley left with as much dignity as she could muster, closing the door lightly behind her.
All she could do was pick her way down the twisting path past the neighboring shanties and up the small mound that overlooked the town. She sat in the chilly dusk and watched Abeyas’s twin moons sitting low in the horizon.
Framed by a pink sky, one of the orbs was passing behind the other.
The evening sky was more beautiful than Charley had seen for quite a long time. Abeyas wasn’t known for much, but its night skies were generally regarded as superb. Charley might’ve enjoyed the moment if she wasn’t so distraught. Kicked out by her own mother! Disowned. Rejected. How had things come to this?
True, she wasn’t a great scrounger. But what did her mother expect? She wasn’t as big or strong as her brothers. She wasn’t as fast or as slippery either. She wasn’t a great thief. She had a reasonable command of language but folks in Sandflower Downs didn’t resolve their problems through flowery talk. The obvious way of making money was to sell her body. Tracking through the arid wastes every day kept her slim, though her breasts had always been ripe. Her hair was sun-kissed blond and she’d been told her face was nice to look at. Despite all that, she couldn’t bring herself to open her legs for the lowlife apes in this town. The thought was too disgusting for words. But things had changed now. Her last lifeline had been taken away. Anna was practically forcing her to become a two-bit whore. Was that her plan all along? Someone like Charley could turn a nice credit or two, particularly with traveling water carriers and tarbor herders.
Charley lost herself in the twin moons of Abeyas and her resolve strengthened. She would never lower herself to the bottom of the food chain. She would survive and she would do it her way. Not only that, she would rise to power. She hungered for it just as much as any man did. If Sandflower Downs was good for anything, it was giving one a savage hunger for more. More wealth. More food. More comfort. More dignity. Just more.
Charley promised herself right there that she would be more, not less. She was a young woman with her health and vitality. She wasn’t about to let those things slip away meekly. She was going to be an active player in this galaxy no matter what it took.
A grunting sound came wafting over the low mounds. It faded quickly, but Charley thought she knew that sound. Curious, she slipped back through the winding path and crept up to Anna’s hovel. The place she was no longer welcome. She heard the sound again, louder this time. Crouching low, she crept round the side of the hovel, glad for the darkness closing in on all sides.
Through a side window she looked into Anna’s bedroom. Her mother was getting dressed while a thick-set man rolled over, presumably to go to sleep. Anna had clearly just pleasured this creep and was now climbing in to cuddle him. The rest of the hovel was silent - Anna insisted on switching off all the gas lamps once dinner was finished. Her brothers would be piled into the other bedroom and were probably fast asleep after scrounging all day.