Poor Man's Fight (15 page)

“Sure did,” Darren smiled shamelessly. He jerked his thumb toward Ramirez’s exit from the room. “I’m not stealing her seat, am I?”

“Nah, she’s gone,” Casey shrugged. “Even captains get shot down. I should really stick to paying for the company of women.”

Darren’s smile only widened. “It does seem to make things easier.”

“So you’re all hooked up now? Got yourself a hand cannon, I see.”

“Yup. Chang and Jerry helped me out. I like it, but it still feels like it’s a bit much. Can’t say I’ve got
any experience with guns. I’m from the New Dawn system, and civilians aren’t even allowed to have guns there.”

Casey
nodded sagely. “There are some spots here that get used as shooting ranges. Spend the money on some ammo and go get used to the way she feels and the aim. You can buy practice programs for a holocom that’ll tie in the targeting suite. And keep your eye out for messages from a guy named Flexner, he’s from our ship. Ex-Union marine, puts on some informal shooting classes every couple of weeks. He charges, but it’s worth it.”

They chatted for
a while longer on the topic, with Casey dispensing sage wisdom on handling oneself while armed. They ordered dinner and soon found themselves joined by more crewmates. Darren heard stories about raiding colonies and wildcat mining operations, of squandering loot shockingly fast and of the crazy things they did to get by until the next cruise. As the food gave way to drinks and more drinks, they gave advice about places to go, of how to tell when a victim is holding out something valuable, and how best to enjoy one’s fortune.

“Look, prostitutes like the ones here?
They’re licensed professionals,” explained Carl, the crew’s designated know-it-all. “They could take off today and make just as much money on a couple dozen other planets, ‘cept they’d have to pay taxes and fees there.”

Darren nodded; his “bath” had certainly been unforgettable.
“I was thinkin’ about staying here for the night.”

“Woah, slow down there, son,” counseled
Casey. “Don’t go too crazy too fast. We’re all for hard partying, but you’re running on a half-share. Stretch your money out a little at least until the next cruise is on the horizon.”

“Oh, don’t listen to him,”
Lauren said, kicking the captain’s leg under the table. “Knock yourself out. If you like the baths, staying overnight will blow your mind.”

“You should know,” Jerry warned, “that
Lauren here’s co-owner of the Palace. She’s a little biased.”

The quartermaster shrugged and sat back in her chair. “I like pretty things,”
Lauren said.

Casey
waved a hushing hand at her. “Listen, Darren, a lot of guys drop into town with far more money than you’ve got after a big score and they piss it away in two, three weeks. Then they’re stuck waiting for another ship to go out on another raiding cruise, and that’s if they can find a berth on it at all. It’s nice enough here to go wander out and sleep under a tree, and we’ve all done it, but not because we wanted to.”

“Killjoy,”
Lauren smirked, kicking the captain again.

“There’s nothing wrong with the
cheaper hotels around here. Take your time.”

Darren gave it some hazy thought, staring at his glass. “Guess you might be right. It’s just nice to get laid again.
It’s not like you can maintain a relationship on board a ship.”

Lauren
shrugged. “It happens on a pirate crew sometimes. Not like there’s management to frown on your workplace romance.”

“Oh, yeah, and the ladies on
Vengeance
are a pack of real sweethearts,” Casey said with rolling eyes. “Stick with the girlfriends that charge up front for now, Darren. Don’t get tangled up with the women on our ship. They’re a bunch of crazy, bloodthirsty criminals.”

***

In the end, Darren couldn’t stay at the Palace after all. Casey bought one round of drinks after another long into the night, and then Darren discovered the Palace’s talent would not work with staggering drunks. Apparently professionals had standards. So Darren stumbled out into the street—then returned for his belongings, and stumbled back out into the street again—and wandered through the still-active streets of Paradise until he came to a hotel.

It was a three-story building made of concrete, probably dating back to the days when the planet had been minimally colonized for resource extraction. The sign over the front entrance labeled it the Friendly Shores, which after a moment of
contemplative swaying in the roadway seemed clever to Darren. It was, after all, built right on the seashore, and so far everyone had been friendly. He was sold.

The elderly Asian woman who watched over the lobby sent him upstairs after asking pointed questions about “trouble” and “wanting company.” Darren found his room, entered, and gave it a look around. It wasn’t nearly as
posh as the passenger suite on
Aphrodite
, but it wasn’t too much of a dive, either. Of course, he realized, that might have been the alcohol influencing his opinion.

Darren decided it was fine. The place didn’t stink, the sheets and carpet were clean and he couldn’t hear his neighbors. He dropped his stuff and pulled off his shirt to go to bed. Then the doorbell rang.

Outside, Darren found a pretty, shapely woman leaning on the doorframe. She looked a bit younger than Darren, with short-cut black hair and smooth, golden features that defied ethnic classification. She wore shiny, skin-tight black pants and a shimmering silver bikini top. Her right hand held a bottle of wine.

“Hi,” she smiled, and looked down with obvious pleasure at Darren’s bare chest. “You’re not going to bed alone, are you?”

Darren blinked. “Thought about it,” he admitted.

“Aw, that’d be a waste.”

“Who are you?”

“Call me Gina.” Her hand roamed up and down his chest. “I’ve got this whole bottle of wine here and I’m looking for someone to share it with.”

“You mean pay for it?”

“Aw, don’t be mean,” Gina pouted momentarily. “Wine’s on me. Won’t find many girls who’ll share like that.”

“Piss off, whore,” said a new voice. Darren and Gina found another woman walking up to Darren’s door. She was dressed in considerably less than Gina, and what little there she wore was practically transparent. “This is my fare. Nobody sent you up here.” She pushed Gina aside and immediately assumed exactly the same stance. “Hello,” she cooed sweetly, touching Darren’s chest.

Entertaining as this was, Darren saw no reason for Gina to leave. He felt pretty brave. “You know,” he said, “you could both—“

Without a word, Gina smashed her wine bottle over the other woman’s head. Darren gasped as the nameless girl went down in a heap, and then stared at her nearly unconscious form as she groaned on the floor.

“Jesus,” Darren blinked at Gina.

Gina looked up at Darren with starry eyes. “Sorry,” she giggled quietly, “I guess I dropped my wine.” Seeing Darren’s shock and indecision, she slid her fingers down his chest and then under the top of his trousers. “You can handle a clumsy girl like me, can’t you?”

***

The next day’s watch section on
Aphrodite
was even thinner than the last. With only fourteen men and women, they needed just a single shuttle. A couple of them were new recruits from
Aphrodite
herself. Ramirez, the junior astrogator, had to re-introduce herself to the watch leader, a short, grouchy drunkard named Jiang. She had to re-introduce one of the other recruits, too, a pretty young passenger’s attendant named Carla.

Jiang had a hell of a hangover. He only barely remembered Ramirez, but everyone vouched for her. He didn’t even remember Carla at all, and could’ve sworn Ramirez was the only woman recruited from
Aphrodite
. He also could’ve sworn that he’d seen Carla working the streets of Paradise City months ago. Haywood and Butler spoke up for her, though. That seemed good enough.

Once on board, Jiang doled out a couple of chores. He took the first watch on the bridge. Haywood volunteered to go with him. Jiang assigned Ramirez and Carla to split off and do visual rounds of the ship, teaming them with Ismail and…
hell, Butler. Butler looked like he was volunteering to go with Carla.

Jiang shrugged it off. Maybe Butler was banging her. “Go ahead,” he waved. “Rest of you, do whatever. Just keep your holocoms on and don’t get so shitfaced you can’t tell an emergency alarm from the casino toys.”

He roamed up to the bridge with Haywood, who asked, “Figure Butler’s fucking her?”

“Probably,” Jiang said. “Your first job is to find a security camera
wherever they go so we can record it.”

Haywood chuckled. Once they got to the bridge he found the security control station and got to work on it. Jiang sat in the captain’s chair and checked in with the
Vengeance
’s bridge watch and port control.

“Sloppy shit, this mess,” Jiang grumbled over his shoulder to Haywood. “Someone should’ve stayed on the bridge at least until we got here.”

“No kidding,” Haywood agreed. He easily located everyone with the security station’s controls. Haywood did a quick, serious sweep of the ship via its internal surveillance equipment. Fourteen people, all accounted for. He then tapped twice on the holocom hidden in his pocket.

On one video screen, he saw Ramirez walk through the corridors of the main promenade with Ismail. She calmly tapped twice on her earring holocom in response. Casually falling a pace behind her partner, she drew
the long dagger from its sheath on her leg. Ismail hadn’t a clue; one moment he was walking, and in the next he had a blade through his throat.

She took off running. On another screen, Butler and “Carla” made a beeline for engineering. Haywood checked the screen showing the casino floor again, ensuring the rest of the watch was there.

Jiang kept grumbling. “I mean, fuck, if we’re going to go to the trouble of setting up watch sections, you’d think the people on watch would at least be serious about it.” He called up a holo screen from the captain’s communications suite and started scanning channels for something good to watch.

Consequently, Jiang never saw Haywood draw his pistol and point it to the back of his head. The first bullet shattered Jiang’s skull; the second was unnecessary, and was fired mainly out of habit.

Less than two minutes later, Ramirez crouched beside the open entryway to the casino. Screens projected by her holocom displayed the feed from the chamber’s security cameras, routed to her from the bridge. She took the time to count and re-count the pirates. Her luck held; they were all gathered around the same large poker table.

Ramirez slipped inside, staying low and using every bit of cover to her advantage. The pirates remained wrapped up in conversations about rates at the Harem and how long it might take to ransom the hostages. Slinking carefully under tables and chairs, pausing to choose cover carefully, Ramirez closed in.

She pulled the thermal grenade out from her jacket, set its blast radius, double-checked her sight lines, and then stood and threw. Exposing herself even for a moment seemed like a bad idea, but accuracy was vital. Better to commit and get them all at once than botch things and have to face survivors.

Just the same, she ducked beneath the roulette table. Even under solid cover, she could feel the intense heat. Debris flew, much of it igniting instantly. Ramirez rose again with her pistol in hand to finish off anyone who survived.
Water rained down on her from the flame suppression system as she fired into the sole twitching body.

“Nice job, Ramirez,” Haywood said over the holocom.

“Are we all set?” asked Butler.

“We are,” Ramirez confirmed, already headed for the exit. “How’s engineering?”

“So far it’s just like the notes said,” Butler answered. His voice took on a patronizing tone as he added, “Carla’s already being a real help passing me tools and finding parts.”

Ramirez ignored it, hoping Gina would as well. The last thing she wanted was a feud between the two. Whore or not, Gina—not Carla, though the men didn’t need to know that—had proven herself amazingly resourceful. Ramirez couldn’t help but develop high hopes for the younger woman. Butler and Haywood, on the other hand, were typical, greedy, treacherous lowlifes. If technicians weren’t so vital for this caper, Ramirez would just as soon have shot both of them already.

She would likely have to eliminate them before too long, anyway. They represented too much risk. Both were dangerous career criminals to begin with; moreover, they would not be pleased to learn who “Ramirez” really was, or why she had posed as a junior navigator on a cruise liner.

Nor would they be happy to know why
the former “junior astrogator” refused to let a ship like this remain in the hands of this bunch of pirates—or any other.

“Stick to the plan. Haywood, head down to engineering. I can handle the bridge on my own as long as you and Butler can get us moving.”

“It’s still like I said,” Butler warned, “we’re not going to be able to warm up enough to get very far right away.”