Marauder Kronos: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Mating Wars) (3 page)

“
C
aptain
!”

It’s Ramu’s voice. He’s limping awkwardly into the command room. Delphie got him good.

We’re accelerating at .5g again, so gravity is back.

I point down to his balls. “Looks like you trained Delphie really well in just one session.”

He grits his teeth and glares at me. “I just saw the human woman in the kitchen. She’s still wearing the suit.”

I hold a hand up to my ear, and I pull it up taut and straight, flicking it back and forth.

“Captain,” Ramu says icily.

“Not your problem,” I say. “I just transferred the other half of your payment into your account. Did you want to work another job for me? If not, I can drop you off at the next station.”

“You’re firing me?” Ramu asks.

“No,” I say. “I just remember when I first hired you. At that time, it sounded like you had other plans after this mission.”

“No, Captain,” Ramu says. “I...I’d like to be full crew.”

I grin and lean back in my chair, throwing my feet up onto the console. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” Ramu says. “It’s just, uh, the pirates with heart thing. That, uh, appeals to me.”

“Really, Ramu?” I ask. “Of all the things you could have made up, that’s the absolutely least believable lie you could have told. If you had told me you wanted to ‘keep training with Delphie,’ I
might
have bought it. Maybe.”

“All right!” Ramu snaps. “I want that fucking suit!”

I nod. “Yeah, no shit.”

“I thought it all out,” he says. “All the economics and shit. So normally for a ship this size doing standard pirate business, you’d want at least three more Marauders, or like six more humans. That’s the minimum you’d need for solid raids – like real raids where you have to fight – not ones where you trick ‘em like we did last time.”

“So what are you getting at? Are you my business manager now?”

“No,” Ramu says. “You can sell that suit for a huge paycheck, sure, but whoever you sell it to is gonna’
use
it. Let’s say you sell it for two years’ worth of bankroll. After two years, it’s gone. But if
you
use the suit, it will profit you for the rest of your life.”

“I don’t know,” I say, leaning so far back in my chair that I’m basically laying down. I crack my knuckles. “If I’m wearing the suit, I can’t help but feel like I’m a huge target. Once everyone knows that Kronos, the pirate with heart, has a biosuit, I’ll just draw trouble. You think the peacekeepers will leave me alone when I have the most illegal weapon in the solar system? And when I’m using it to raid and steal shit from people?”

“Harmony is flexing her muscles too much,” Ramu says. “The insane A.I. dictator of Earth, that’s what the peacekeepers are worried about. Not some dickhead pirate...no offense, Captain. But you don’t gotta’ draw the fire. You give
me
the suit, see? Now you don’t gotta’ hire a bunch more crew, I’m all your muscle. You just pay me the normal split of the profits – whatever you give Delphie you give me – and boom, the suit pays for itself.”

“Right,” I say, looking down my raised feet at him. “And you get to become the most feared pirate in the solar system.”

Ramu shrugs.

I nod my head and pretend to be deep in thought. “Well, it’s worth considering, Ramu. I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, Cap,” he says, and limps out of the room.

I smile when he’s gone. I’m definitely selling the suit, but this will motivate Ramu to scare it off Minna’s skin.

And once that suit is off her, maybe I can convince her to keep working for me as cook. I’ll drop her off if she really wants me to, but I have to admit I’d much rather have her close by my side. The closer the better.

* * *

M
inna is
the last to arrive. She’s put a regular crew’s jumpsuit on over top of her bright orange biosuit. It leaves much more to my imagination than the skin-tight biosuit.

I’m standing straight with my shoulders back in the center of the command room. My small crew of three is standing before me, not at rigid attention as I’d prefer, but looking at me with weariness and skepticism.

“You’re standing before your captain,” I say.

Delphie slouches even more. “So?”

“So,” I say, “act like it!”

Ramu snaps to attention and nods to me respectfully. He really wants that suit.

Minna looks at Ramu’s stiff pose, sighs, and emulates him, but with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

Delphie stand up straighter, but yawns, totally killing the effect.

“We’ll start each day with a meeting like this,” I say. “I will get a report from each crew member, after which I will brief all of you. Security! Report!”

Ramu turns so he’s partially facing Minna and Delphie. “Training with Delphie is progressing quickly, Captain. I’m teaching her to use the skull poker, sir!”

“Good,” I say. “Engineering, report!”

“We’re going to do this
every
day?” Delphie asks.

“Report!”

“The batteries are mostly recharged from the brief period we used the laser. We have plenty of reaction mass left for engines. I’ll do routine maintenance on the heat sink tomorrow probably, or whenever we dock. Uh, everything is good, I guess.”

I wait.

“
Captain,”
Ramu hisses to her.

“Captain,” Delphie says.

“Thanks, Delphie,” I say. “Now, kitchen, report!”

Minna looks up at me nervously. She’s more stunning every time I see her. Half of the reason I decided to make the crew report to me first thing in the morning is simply so I can wake up and get to see her face first thing. And her body.

“I have been cooking around the clock,” Minna says. “Mostly high-protein meals with beans and artificial meat.”

“Yes,” I say. “Dinner was excellent, great work. But how have you been cooking around the clock? Where’s all the food? I just saw the portion for dinner, and we ate it….”

Minna looks down, blushing. Damn she looks good when she blushes.

“Uh…,” she mumbles.

“He’s Captain!” Ramu roars. “Respect him!”

“It’s fine, Ramu,” I say. “Minna?”

“I ate all the rest,” she says. “Captain.”

“How much did you eat?” Delphie asks.

“A lot,” Minna says, looking embarrassed. “It’s...it’s the suit. I felt hungry as soon as I put it on. It’s a prototype...I don’t think we got the efficiency of it quite down yet.”

“You mean you know how to
make
a biosuit?” Ramu asks.

Biosuits aren’t produced so much as grown, and they haven’t been made since the Marauders arrived in the solar system well over 27 years ago. Some say the peacekeepers still know how to make them, others think the knowledge has been lost entirely. Either way, biosuits are strictly illegal aside from use by peacekeeper Marauders and Seraphim. Darkstar – the renegade Marauders on the edge of Pluto’s orbit – ignores all human laws, and they of course use biosuits. But word has it that the peacekeepers kicked Darkstar’s shit a while back, and Darkstar hasn’t done much of anything for some time.

“Not without a lab,” Minna says. “And a full team.”

“Damn,” Ramu says.

I smile at Minna and perk my ears up. “Well, Minna, eat all you’d like. We understand your situation, so don’t be shy.”

“Yes, Captain,” she says.

“If you took the suit off,” Ramu says, “you’d feel a lot better.”

“I don’t know how,” she says. “And even if I did, I would
not
let you sell it.”

I say nothing. It’s not that I only care about profit, but I have crew to pay. Delphie depends on me, and I’ll quickly run out of money if I become all heart and no pirate. If I can get that suit off her and sell it, Minna will be a lot safer. The suit is powerful and might protect her against a handful of people who are out to hurt her, but it’s basically a big, bright, orange target painted on her back. Hell, I may even give her a cut of the profits to ease her loss.

“Are you going to report, Captain?” Delphie asks.

“Huh?”

“You said the crew would all report, and then you would.”

“Oh,” I say, “right. Lila, screen!”

The screen turns on, and it shows us less than an hour away from New Rotterdam.

Ramu grins, Delphie sighs, and Minna stares at the screen with a horrified expression.

“Ever been on a habitat, Minna?” I ask.

Her lips move in silence, and finally she gets some words out. “New Rotterdam doesn’t count, it’s a
pirate
habitat, you’re not...you’re not going to drop me off
there
?”

I remember I promised I’d drop her off when we first docked. I wasn’t counting New Rotterdam as a real option. “It’s a big spinning tube in space full of atmosphere, trees, water, all the stuff you need to survive. That’s the definition of a habitat.”

“It’s my kind of habitat,” Ramu says, grinning. “Whores, wonderful drugs, fighting, almost no laws – ”

I give Ramu a look, and he finally shuts up.

“He’s just messing with you,” I say to Minna.

Delphie holds up her arm and points to her wrist. “Last time we were on New Rotterdam, I tried to break up a monkey knife fight, and got
this
.”

“Why would you interfere with two monkeys swinging knives around? You brought that on yourself.”

Minna takes Delphie’s wrist and looks down at the wound. “This doesn’t look like a stab wound.”

“It bit me,” Minna says. “And I got an infection, and – ”

“And Captain Kronos shelled out money for high-end antibiotics, and you were fine.”

“You weren’t a captain back then!” Delphie shouts up at me.

“So even before I was responsible for you as crew, still I took care of you.”

“You just felt guilty because the monkey you put money on is the one who bit me.”

“Well,” Minna says, “you’ve convinced me to stay on the ship while we are there.”

“No way,” I say, shaking my head. “You have to stay close to me, so I can protect you.”

Delphie holds her wrist up to Minna and points at it, mouthing something to Minna.

“Captain,” Minna says, “I didn’t quite finish my report. The last thing I wanted to add was that we are totally out of food.”

“There are extra rations in the fridge unit tucked behind the kitchen – ”

“No,” Minna says. “I found those. We’re totally out. I ate everything.”

“New Rotterdam has plenty to eat,” I say, grinning.

But in my mind I’m doing the math. If she goes through rations this quickly, I can’t afford to keep her fed. I
have to
get that suit off of her.

“
C
ome on
,” Kronos says. “It’s time to go.”

He’s smiling widely at me and floating just outside the hatch to my quarters. His handsome features trying to trick me onto that awful pirate habitat.

“I’m good here,” I say. “Just lock the ship.”

“You think locks keep pirates out?” he asks.

“I was reading about it these past few hours,” I say. “There’s a strict code of honor among pirates, and it’s enforced quite violently on New Rotterdam.”

“So you’re going to let a
code of honor
protect you?”

Jerky would protect me, if it came down to that.

“Minna,” he says, “the code of honor is there, for sure, but it’s….”

“You’re trying to think of a good word to pick that won’t scare me,” I say, cutting him off. “You’re finding it very difficult to convince me that New Rotterdam is safe while simultaneously convincing me just how dangerous pirates are. It’s a contradiction.”

“You’re using all your fancy science talk to make me feel dumb,” he snaps. “So let me try a new angle of attack. What are you going to eat while you are locked tight on this ship and we are on the hab?”

My stomach groans a little.

“I heard it,” he says.

“You swear you’ll keep me safe?” I ask.

“I swear it,” Kronos says. “I will protect you no matter the cost to me.”

“That isn’t a very pirate-like thing to say.”

“I’ve got a big heart,” he says, grinning.

I can’t get a read on him. Aside from how deliciously handsome he is, he
could
be sincerely trying to do right by me. On the other hand, he could just be really good at putting on an act. I find it hard to forget the reason that we met is because he attacked the ship I was on. Every time I almost let myself fall for his charm, I remind myself that a pirate with heart is – at its heart – still a pirate.

“I guess I don’t have a real choice,” I say, pushing off my bed and toward the hatch.

Kronos smiles and holds out his hand.

Without thinking, I grab hold of it to steady myself, and he squeezes back. I feel my heart beat fast in my chest, and butterflies rise up in my stomach.

I pull my hand away, and I follow him out to the airlock without touching him again. I can’t let my defenses fall away like this. I need to keep my distance.

Ramu and Delphie are waiting at the airlock. Delphie’s arms are crossed, and her back is turned toward Ramu.

“You two having a fight?” Kronos asks.

“No,” Delphie snaps. “There’s nothing between us.”

“If there’s nothing between us,” Ramu says, “then why did you get all weird when I told you I was gonna’ buy myself a threesome?”

“Because it’s
gross!
” Delphie says. “You’re gross!”

“If you don’t want me to pay for sex,” Ramu says, “then you could help – ”

Delphie spins around, and her foot is already swinging up as she completes her turn. Ramu doesn’t budge, and the kick connects solidly into his crotch, but he doesn’t show any sign of pain.

Delphie’s eyes widen.

“You think I’m not gonna’ armor up my balls?” Ramu asks. “Never get hit in the same place twice. I need these things intact if I’m going to perform tonight.”

“God!” Delphie says, shoving him back.

He floats into the wall and catches the handhold. Delphie starts to turn the hatch, and when she pushes it open, Ramu leaps out into New Rotterdam’s hangar.

“Hell yeah!” he shouts. “Time to party! Captain...ring me up when we’re ready to leave!”

He floats away down into the massive expanse of the hangar bay, until he’s just a small purple dot.

“Delphie,” I say, putting a hand on her shoulder.

She swats it away, and says without looking at me, “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t trust that guy, Delphie,” Kronos says. “He’s got secrets.”

“Why do you both think I care so much?” Delphie asks in a high-pitched, too-fast voice. “I don’t care. At all.”

She pushes out of the airlock. “Meet you at the elevator.”

Kronos looks at me, his ears flat. “I’ve known her for a long time.”

“So you know what she’s really thinking?”

“Hell no,” he says. “Women say one thing, but mean another. I was about to ask you what she was thinking.”

I laugh. “It’s
so
obvious.”

Kronos gives me a confused look, his ears pulling further back.

“She likes Ramu, but she’s too shy to go for it. Now she’s really heartbroken that he’s going to go whoring on a dirty-ass pirate habitat.”

“Oh,” Kronos says. “So she’s jealous?”

I sigh. Are pirate men really so dense? Or maybe
all
men are just clueless. “It’s not jealousy. Not really. If Ramu returned the feelings for her, then why would he still talk openly to her – almost brag – about hiring two hookers?”

“To show that even though he’s older,” Kronos says, “he can still handle two women at once. He even gave Delphie a chance to hook up with him. He said if she wanted to, he wouldn’t – ”

“God!” I shout. “You are just as dumb and as big an asshole as Ramu!”

I push out of the airlock, careful not to go too fast. I float through zero-g toward the wall – or the ground – depending on how you look at it. There’s no up or down in zero-g. I float very slowly, and soon Kronos flies past me.

“Sorry,” he blurts out as he floats right by me, and he’s soon out of range for me to say anything back, even if I had wanted to.

When I approach the ground, he reaches up to catch me. He’s clutching a long rail to keep himself on the ground.

“No,” I snap. “I’m fine.”

He keeps his hand out, but doesn’t grab me.

I hit the ground, try to snatch for the rail, but miss.

I start to float away so I swing my arm back around, but I’m already too far away. But then I feel myself squeezing the rail, even though I’m looking at both of my hands in front of me. I look down and see that a bright orange tendril has gripped onto the rail.

“Shit!” Kronos hisses. He grabs the tendril and pulls me in. “Put that thing away!”

I don’t really know how, but once I feel Kronos grab my shoulders and pull me in toward the rail, I feel safe again, and the tendril pulls itself back into the biosuit.

“Minna…,” he says. “You can’t use that thing on New Rotterdam. Pirate code or not, if someone sees you doing that, they are going to try to get their hands on your suit. And if you really can’t get that suit off...then they’ll try to get their hands on
you.
Not all pirates are as nice and chivalrous as me.”

“I can’t control the suit,” I say. “Not really.”

“So how did you do that?”

“When I saw that I couldn’t reach the rail, I panicked.”

“If you had let me catch you – ”

“I know. Sorry. But I thought I was going to float away and it felt like I was falling, and then the next thing I knew the tendril had grabbed the rail.”

“So fear, panic, that kind of thing activates it,” Kronos says.

He’s still holding tightly to my shoulder, even though I’m holding securely to the rail.

“Just avoid getting scared or panicking while we’re here,” Kronos says, “and you should be good.”

“Right,” I say. “I’ll avoid panicking when monkeys with knives and a habitat full of barbarians like Ramu are all around me.”

“There’s nothing to fear,” Kronos says. “Not with me protecting you.”

As silly as it is, those words reassure me, and I let out a long, relieved sigh. “All right, let’s go.”

* * *

“
F
inally
,
you guys made it,” Delphie says.

She’s holding onto the rail outside one of the elevators. The hangar bay is located in the center of the habitat’s rotation, so there is no artificial gravity there. The habitat rotates
around
the hangar. The elevators move from the hangar and down to the outer rings of New Rotterdam, where all the buildings, parks, lakes, drugs, whorehouses, and monkeys with knives are.

Once we reach the outer rings, the rotation of the habitat will make it feel like we’re walking in Earth’s gravity.

“What’s your rush?” Kronos asks Delphie. “You didn’t even want to come here.”

“I want to get it over with,” Delphie says.

The elevator opens, and we float in.

As it moves, we slowly are drawn toward the wall of the elevator, which becomes the ground. Once we are on the ground, the gravity slowly increases as we descend toward the habitat’s outer rings.

“So you guys are forced to come here since no habs will take you?” I ask.

“Yep,” Delphie says. “Racist fucks.”

Marauders and Seraphim are not allowed on the other habitats. The habitats have the highest technology and standard of living in the entire solar system. New Rotterdam is the black sheep, and the only hab that allows non-humans.

“If you can get the suit off while we are here,” Kronos says, “it would be really good. I can probably get the best price for it here, and I won’t just kick you out with money you earn from cooking and cleaning dishes. I’ll give a good chunk of the money that I get from the biosuit to you.”

“What?” Delphie snaps. “I didn’t agree to that – ”

“I’m the captain!” Kronos says. “And I’ll pay her out of my share, so calm down!”

I nod nervously, but I say nothing. Jerky isn’t just a biosuit. It’s a living thing. It’s not Kronos’s right – or mine – to sell it like some inanimate object.

But he may just be playing nice to me. Trying to make me feel safe enough to give him more information. It costs him nothing to claim he’d give me part of the money from the sale – talk is cheap.

I haven’t been on Earth for many years, but my body never forgets its gravity. As soon as we hit Earth gravity, the elevator stops and the doors open.

I’ve seen photos from the good, non-pirate habitats. They are breathtaking and gorgeous. They have long rolling hills of emerald green, marble-white statues towering up into the sky. And the sky is nothing but the other end of the city – more green grass and crystal clear lakes seemingly floating miles and miles above your head.

But when I see New Rotterdam, the only thing about it that resembles those habitats is the basic shape.

The ground is nothing but dirt with weeds everywhere, and all the buildings are made of rusted sheet metal rather than marble. The lakes are brown, and the main source of color is horrendously gaudy neon signs, advertising upstanding businesses such as whorehouses, drug dens, and black market pawnshops.

“Oh, look,” Delphie says. “
That
whorehouse will give you store credit if you get an STD. Nice.”

I consider saying something, but think better of it. Nothing I say is going to make Delphie feel better.

“Welcome to New Rotterdam,” Kronos says. “It’s a bit of a shithole, but it has its charm.”

“Really?” I ask. “What charm?”

“Hmmm,” he says, stroking his chin. “I guess some of the signs can be a bit poetic, like that one.”

He points.

I read it aloud. “’Put one of our needles into your veins and feel the warmth of the summer sun shining into your blood,’ and...
that
, you think
that’s
charming?”

Kronos shrugs. “Poetry is subjective.”

“It’s shit,” Delphie says. “This whole place is shit. Let’s buy as much food as we can afford and get the hell out of here.”

“Why don’t we get a nice sit-down meal?” Kronos says. “I’ll pay.”

Delphie’s eyes bulge. “You never offer to pay? You – ”

Kronos looks at me and starts talking over Delphie. “She’s just giving me a hard time. I’d be happy to get us all a nice meal.”

“Thanks, Captain,” I say.

I try to sound sincere, but I’m not quite sure that a “nice meal” is a possibility on New Rotterdam. I am grateful, however, to eat
anything
other than ship rations that I have to cook myself.

I still feel hungry, but the all-consuming and painful hunger from when Jerky first bonded with me seems gone. I feel hungrier than I normally would, but not
that
much more. Hopefully I won’t have to feel embarrassed by how much I eat. I doubt anyone has ever seen a human woman out-eat two Seraphim.

Once we exit the elevator, we start to walk down the street. There are dozens of other elevators on either side of us, all coming from the hangar bay – from the center of the habitat. When I look up, many kilometers in the air I see the metal cube of the hangar above us, the elevator shafts receding into it until they look like thin strands of rope.

And all kinds of people are flooding out of the elevators beside us and moving down the street. There are at least fifty cars crowded and parked around the elevator shafts, and their robotic voices are shouting abrasive advertisements, each one trying to be louder than the other. The advertisements merge together into a horrible drone, and we have to shout at each other to be heard over it.

“Let’s walk,” Kronos shouts. “Better to get the exercise.”

“Or you’re just feeling cheap again,” Delphie mutters.

Some of the cars start to fly off as soon as passengers board, but as soon as one takes off, another one that has been hovering above like a vulture slams down into the empty space. I even see two of the cars trying to ram each other for one of the spots.