Space Pirates

By B.S. Adkison

This is it! Brought to the world's attention out of necessity. Considered too powerful and too overwhelming for the general public, that is until now! You won't believe how close we all came to being eliminated, of being 'rubbed-out' because of the danger we represent and the level of heroics that prevented it. Selfless heroes gave their all without asking anything in return. In fact, their actions and efforts remained hidden, the details became classified because of worry it would be all too unpalatable for the general public. For shame! We (the writers and researchers) demand satisfaction! We embrace the freedom of the press and we love freedom in general. The world is ready. The time is right. Let's finish this once and for all. We are all in this together. We share the universe and it's high time we all find out who we share it with. You know you're curious. You want and need the truth, so here it is! If the world isn't ready, too bad! It's too late! Here it comes so buckle-up and hang-on! The cat's out of the bag, the genie's out of the bottle and it won't go back in! Not this time! Ha-ha-ha-ha! That may have been the pirate talking, but seriously, enjoy this story because before long, they might return and finish what was started, than it won't matter. Nothing will because we'll be dead! Ha-ha-ha-ha!

• Language: English
• Publisher: B.S. Adkison
• Release date: Aug 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463096222

B.S. Adkison

Air Force veteran. Fleet manager for a contracting company.I Have built and/or restored several vintage racing and collector cars over the years. I Won a racing championship in 2010. I am an avid reader of mostly history, science and science fiction. I tend to find the topics of magic and time travel intellectually vacant, vacuous and tedious but don't let that discourage you if that sort of thing is your interest, it's my problem, not yours! I'm a hopeless romantic but I tend to shy away from that theme as well. (Too personal.) What little I do write regarding sexuality is usally from an unapologetic hetero-sexual viewpoint because of my comfort of that concept and I admit that I can sound somewhat near the verge of misogynistic, and I do apologize for that, but I certainly won't condemn, criticize or denounce anyone's differing views. Live and let live in freedom and peace is my viewpoint and I will fight like hell for other's rights in that regard if i have to, but, I insist on being able to exercise my own thoughts and opinions so please don't take it personally. Go ahead and hate me if you must but not the free-speech forum or the intellectual freedom that I exercise and love. I really just want to have a fun and pleasant life on this earth and I hope others also want that and I try to treat everyone well with that in mind.

Book preview

Chapter 1

THE CRASH

A sudden and unexpected jolt and the craft shudders to its very core. Critical systems blink off as they are overwhelmed with a dramatic wave of electromagnetic pulse. With the anti-matter drive system off-line, and reserve power diminishing; this small scout ship is going down! The crew of three are too busy trying to gain control to worry about what will probably be their certain death in just a few short moments. The commander makes a brave, last ditch effort to coax just enough thrust from the engines to avoid being smashed to bits on the blue planet that they had got a glimpse of before losing their visual observation systems as the power of the planet’s unyielding gravity pulls them in. With luck, the liquid surface will help break their momentum. But that last burst of energy taxed by the commander will cost them dearly as all the remaining ship’s systems shut down, including the artificial atmosphere.

The impact is violent and thrusts the silver-gray colored metallic disk-shaped craft deep into the depths of the brine, but eventually the craft floats back to the liquid surface to be pitched and tossed on the rolling waves under the bright yellow sun. The main hatch bursts open as a final fail-safe to provide the crew a means of escape in this worst-case scenario and the strange mixture of this planet’s atmosphere floods in as a violent wave.

The commander, his systems specialist, and their medical technician lay plastered to the floor enduring almost double their accustomed gravity. They lay stunned, as if punched in the throat from the sudden atmospheric pressure change. Their metallic, windowless saucer is now devoid of the colorful displays and projected viewing ‘windows’ of normal operations, replaced with the featureless, flat, silver-gray floor, curved walls and ceiling that is their craft with its system’s off-line.

Bright, yellow sunlight and a steady breeze flood inside from the open hatchway, bathing the three suffering crew members in a dangerous and foreign atmosphere. They gasp and choke as their bodies react to the shocking mixture of the hundreds of foreign elements that are this planet’s version of ‘sea air.’ But they do not immediately die, because, as the medical specialist noticed before her monitoring equipment went off-line, this world is of a high oxygen content, much higher than their home world. As they snap out of the shock and assess their situation, they communicate to each other about what might be the best plan of action. But communicate is nearly all they can do in this high gravity, as even lifting one’s head off the floor is almost an impossible task.

Restoring the assembler will have to be their top priority, and that will take a herculean effort of manually resetting dozens of circuits and controls located all over the ship. After plans are made and approved by the commander, off they crawl and drag themselves to the various access ports and equipment areas and one by one the necessary steps are taken. Still, it will take them days to complete even the most preliminary of the work and they will almost die of thirst and will be ravished by hunger before the needed power is restored for the assembler which can provide for their urgent needs.

Things don’t go as planned; they discover considerable damage to almost every section of their craft. It took seven of this planet’s days before they could be refreshed from the bounty of the assembler, and when it came on-line, they are overcome with a strange madness that caused their bellies to go into strange, but not necessarily unpleasant convulsions. The medical officer recognized the condition from her training and reassures everyone that it is not dangerous, just a reaction to prolong shock. But still, it is infectious and even somewhat satisfying and they wondered how one had lived without it before. The commander is quick to clamp down on this sickness, and with an application of guilt, discipline is restored.

The situation is grim. Only enough power is restored for a few, low power devises at a time. For example, the assembler, which provides subsistence from stock elements, or the medical re-assembler that repairs biological matter, but as for the artificial environment and gravity, that will take weeks of repairs with the small, portable assembly-assembler.

So begins a structured routine of dragging out the heavy (for them, everything is heavy on this world) equipment and setting it up all over the ship so it can reconstruct a small part of the craft and its sub-assemblies, one area at a time before they go on to the next section and repeat the process. It is the hardest work imaginable for their kind due to the higher than normal gravity and the constant irritation of the foreign breathing air and it is all nearly physically unacceptable- at first. (The medical technician can only heal by returning the body to ‘normal,’ and has little, if any, relief for the atmospheric and gravitational situation.)

In time, the air proves more tolerable, and due to the nearly doubling of their caloric intake, (the assembler scans the body of the user to calculate the correct meal size for current physical output) and with all the extreme physical effort, their wispy bodies are turning into what would be the stuff of body builders on their home planet, if they had them. (They do not.)

It took weeks before they had the strength to sit up, and a solid month before they could stand. When they are finally on their feet, they can operate in a more normal fashion, and objectives start being completed more efficiently. Standing also brings relief from the constant rocking from the wave action of the sea. They are getting their ‘sea legs.’

After some time had passed, a violent storm whipped up the sea, and that, plus a scrape with a creature nearly as large as their ship, (a whale?) an emphasis was put on repairing their sensing equipment, and when that is done, they were surprised when they find that they are surrounded by other, smaller creatures circling their ship. The commander launches a probe, and he is shocked when those creatures promptly destroy that probe with their mouths and teeth!

These stranded, shipwrecked beings, even with their advanced training and conditioning, can’t help but to find this strange, bizarre world fascinating. Even though the liquid surface appears rather featureless, closer inspection proves it is filled with resources and promise. Their world by contrast is a land of uneventful bleakness in comparison, and after a hard and exhausting day as they lay down to sleep, their imaginations are fired, and they could not help but wonder at what could be.

Sleep is the only complete relief from the high gravity and the taxing, complex situations of these busy days. They each dream without restraint, as their brains sort and file, but they never could have imagined what is soon to cross their path.

In the night, the artificial light of the inside of their spaceship spills out of the open hatch as they float aimlessly on the surface of this vast, liquid world. This light does not go unnoticed. Already another ship is on a heading that brings it near.

Chapter 2

THE PIRATES

Captain William Casey Black stands on the fore deck, and he and Mr. Buck, his righthand man, trade the spyglass back and forth between them.

What ye make of it, Mr. Buck?

Is no fire as I have witness replied the older and more experienced man.

Seems Father Brien’s prayers have been answered as this may be from somewhere as he would speak Captain Black said half joking as he signals for his cabin boy, Ping, to fetch their bastardized version of a man of God.

Prayers are nearly all they have as this motley crew, and this dying ship are in dire straits for sure. Overdue for a refit when she was acquired and her merchant crew was dispatched, the Sandylee is more worms than hull. Half of the sickly, malnourished crew are employed manning the pumps at all hours of the day and night, a situation that will not last much longer because of exhaustion or revolt, and probably that will happen before the morn.

Douse the lamps and not a sound! Ordered Captain Black. The news of a boarding passes through the ship and raises the spirits of the men. The smiles on their disfigured faces, ravaged by sores and exposure, widen. Those faces disappear into the darkness, as the oil lamps are extinguished one by one. A course is set that will sweep them in silently, and with the moon shrouded by clouds, surprise should be theirs. But as the Sandylee approaches and as this desperate crew, hot for action, go to the rail and get their first good look in the dim light at their quarry, fear spooks them and disbelief fills their simple minds. They size up the strange, plain and simple floating silver-gray circular craft. Its apparently only door is wide open, spilling a glowing yellow light that reflects off the ripples of the calm sea of this fateful night not unlike the gleam of a spilled chest of gold coins.

It be thee portal to Heaven or thee breech to hell comments Father Brien.

Soon we will know which! Exclaimed the captain, as he began a strange, subdued laugh to himself; just one of many strange quirks that prevail among these desperate men, so close to ruin and insanity. As ghostly and unworldly as their objective seems to be, the assault is on, they have no other options.

On that strange, silver-gray circular floating craft, the three space mariners are sound asleep, exhausted from yet another long day of labor. Sleep, as their only true escape from the high gravity torture, also meant that rising from it is when the force is most overwhelming. It is with annoying rudeness when they are awakened by an alarm from the ship’s sensing systems.

The commander receives the details from the equipment; a large mass of bio-matter (some living, but the majority deceased, and much different from the creatures that they had already observed) is closing in slowly, and it floats on the surface, as their craft currently is. Intrigued and curious, the commander walks outside of the control room and into the night air just in time to see the Sandylee drop her last sail and slowly drift towards him until the two crafts bump together, hull to hull. The system’s specialist and the medical technician watch their commander from the open hatch, but instinct compels them to remain out of sight.

The boarding party of the Sandylee remained out of sight as well, but a crewman who mans a deck gun loaded with grape shot, he has seen the Space Commander as he became visible in the breaking moonlight. His limbs are thin, and his body is covered in form-fitting attire. The creature is standing on the deck of his strange, metallic floating disk. His oversize head and large, unblinking, insect like eyes, confirm in the pirate’s desperate mind that he is certain that he is seeing what could only be the devil himself.

He pulls the cord that drops the hammer that strikes the flint that ignites the powder that discharges the lead balls with a deafening report and the hot metal sweeps through the commander’s fragile body, blowing him overboard and into the sea, and to the waiting creatures that circle the ship. The sea boils for several long moments as the sea creatures do their savage work. Soon, the water calms, and the crimson color disperses.

The two space aliens that remain watching from the hatchway are aghast at the horror. But as the sound of that cannon shot rang out, so did the shouts from the raiders as they jump over the rail and swing down from the rigging of their rotten ship. Their mouths are screaming blaring sounds and projecting strong odors as they advance. Most of them display a sword in one hand and pistol in the other. The systems specialist, and the medical technician, both freeze in fear and they are instantly surrounded, but before they could be cut to pieces, Captain Black intervenes.

No, he will not let these two strange creatures be killed just yet, for the Captain can sense their fear, even though the pair look so different from him, or his men, or anything else in this world, with that fear he knows there will be control, and with control, he knows that all they have, and maybe even the world they come from, could be his. His eyes gleam as he ponders these thoughts while he sizes up the pair.

To the pirates, the pair of space mariners seem to be in stunned silence, but they are in fact busy communicating between themselves and the equipment of their ship in a way that is invisible and incomprehensible to the raiders. After the brutality that they had just witnessed, it is no surprise that the plan should be to eliminate these invaders by any means available. But how? If the environmental systems were on-line, perhaps a poison could be formulated and used. If the anti-matter drive system was up and running, they could merely rise in altitude and spill them out of the open hatch with a tilting maneuver. No, the only realistic plan will involve securing the hand weapon, located just to the side of the medical technician’s current position. They will have to wait for a diversion, a distraction of some kind.

Captain Black, Mr. Buck, Father Brien and the rest of the men, gape at the strange pair. About four feet tall and humanoid, that is with two legs, two arms and one head. The Captain peers around the backside:

No tail.

The head is out of proportion to the body (at least by human standards) with those big, unblinking eyes that resemble an insect’s that give them a freighting, but otherwise benign appearance. The nose is tiny, the ears are mere openings and the mouth is small and simple. The skin is gray as granite, and they are clothed in some kind of bib overall that resembles something that a baby might be swathed in.

The Captain looks close at the one nearest the wall. He moves very near, and now he is towering over the creature in an act of blatant domination. In a husky voice he declares:

This one is female, I can tell, which is remarkable because the others can see no physical difference. The Captain spins away from her as if getting away from an ugly pig. He asks a question of Father Brien:

"What do you make of this?"

The pseudo-man of God collects his thoughts, and after clearing his throat, he said:

I will have to consult scripture to be certain, but what I believe we have here are fallen angels, cast down from Heaven.

The men gasp as Father Brien continues:

"Cast down to you my Captain, to do what you think best and profitable."

The Captain looks satisfied with this answer, but all of the sudden there is crashing and stomping from the direction of the deck of the Sandylee and a female voice is screaming:

BILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!

The disturbance gets closer, and it shouts-out, in a thick, Caribbean accent:

The ship is a sinking and the men are not a pumping and…

The woman appeared in the open hatchway, a buxom island beauty in a fancy, but soiled, red ballroom dress, and she is an assault of curves, jewelry and cleavage.

What da hell is dat?!

She said this, and all eyes turn to the woman as she points her long, red painted fingernail at the captive pair.

Father Brien, was just about to answer the question from the mistress of his Captain that they are fallen angels, but the words had not time to leave his lips before the presumably female captive near the wall moved, and with a touch of her hand, a small rectangle of what appeared to be the solid material of the wall near her dematerializes, and in a flash, she now wielded a device with an extension protruding that hints of some dangerous function. But as she swung its business end towards her captors, her forearm meets the lunging steel of Captain Black’s sword.

Completely severed, the limb, still clutching the weapon, bounces off the floor. The female space mariner faints dead away, joining her departed limb in a heap at the feet of the Pirate Captain.

Lady Jasmine, the Captain’s mistress, joined the others in a few seconds of wide-eyed shock and silence at the spectacle. But the last healthy spaceman jumps into action by springing to the side of his limbless comrade and starts to administer aid. The Captain’s men rush in and the creature is surrounded, with pistols at its head, and blade points to its throat. The space creature faces the threat with indifference and tries to continue his ministrations.

Captain Black waves them away and says:

This one’s got some fire in his belly, keep him in your sights men, but let him work.

Lady Jasmine, a woman of many complex personality traits, one of which is she cannot hold her tongue regardless of the situation, blurts out in her thick island accent:

"Look! He wants to save her! He loves her!"

The pirates give the strange, skinny creature some room to work, and he gets right to it. He drags her to a certain spot of the floor and goes to retrieve the arm, and again the pistols and blade tips spring to his face. He is stopped, and the Captain extends his hand in silent gesture. Quick to understand, the spaceman calmly hands Captain Black the weapon, pointing the discharge end carefully away from everyone. The Captain puts it in his belt. The pirate’s weapons are once again withdrawn.

The spaceman touches certain areas of the wall in an apparent and precise order, and as a result, a box forms around the limp body of the wounded medical technician made of nothing more than a surging blue-green light. It grows brighter and brighter, until the limp body is not visible, and everyone must shield their eyes and look away. After a moment of this, the process reverses, and after the light had died down, everyone sees the spacewoman waking up with her arm reattached, and with not the slightest hint of wound. Even the long sleeve of her form fitting blouse has been repaired.

Captain Black approaches her, he grabs the newly healed limb and lifts her off the floor with it.

Amazing! Is all he can say, and he drops her back down.

Then the Captain, without missing a beat, issues his orders:

Shackle the prisoners, transfer the stores and the booty from the Sandylee, grab ye personal kits and papers, for this be our new charge.

Within a few hours, the spaceship is crowded with the new passengers and all their gear, including live chickens and even a goat. Barrels and crates fill the rounded interior of the saucer, and the two space mariners find themselves in an iron animal cage, propped up off the floor with timber from the floundering Sandylee.

Don’t let their hands touch anything, was the Captain’s orders. Lady Jasmine set up pillows next to the cage and speaks to them softly, but to the space mariners it is all breathy nonsense. But that is about to change.

The ship’s equipment is monitoring the speech of the invaders, and already it has started to break the ‘code’ and the systems have begun to transmit the retrieved data directly to the specially evolved receiving sections in the brains of the currently caged space mariners. Crude versions of what is being said is silently being received and it grows more accurate as time goes on. But the pair have no way of speaking back, at least not in the human sense.

Long ago their race could speak as humans can, but they have evolved a much more efficient communication system apparently involving the radio spectrum, and as a result, language as we know it had been replaced with transmissions filled with pictures, feelings and data, all in one quick blast. That is why the heads are so large, to house those mutations.

Lady Jasmine brings them water and hard biscuits while cooing and coddling as if she has a new pet. She says softly and seductively:

You will give me your magic, and I will rule the world!

Then, with her sweetest laugh, she gives them some fruit.

But these space mariners are far from the end of their rope. Their physical adaptations allow them to ‘see’ through the many sensor arrays fitted throughout the ship, and with their new understanding of the pirate’s language, they are aware of events unfolding around them in many ways better than the pirates are, and with that new and growing information base, they sense a rift between some of the crew that is growing into a major problem. That problem is seaman Able Briggs, the man who swept the space commander from off his deck with that cannon load of grape shot.

Mr. Briggs is in a state of weepy despair and refuses rations, even rum! He has worked himself into a condition of deep regret for firing on an angel, even a fallen angel, as he is sure that it will bring doom to everyone, and he has convinced many of the others that this indeed is what will happen. The others are upset to such a degree that there is talk of desertion, even mutiny. Father Brien is unable to ease the situation, and he makes his report to his Captain. Father Brien really doesn’t have much sway over the crew, after all, he is a pirate preacher, which is a major contradiction that even these simple crewmen can plainly see.

The Captain, as usual, spends most of his time leaning over the sea at the edge of the deck. Of course, he is deep in thought pondering their situation and their next move but also, he is there with his penis out, trying to empty his bladder, which due to disease, hasn’t happened completely in years.

Oh Lord how it menaces me! He says to himself under his breath. But he is thinking of a radical way that he might fix that. He is also thinking of what Father Brien had just reported about seaman Able and how that seems to be affecting the crew.

Out here on the deck and under the stars, the Captain has made his sightings, and he can tell they are drifting towards the shipping lanes and he knows that they may be spotted at any time by others which he knows he must prevent if at all possible.

First, he must take care of the uprising. He calls the crew out on deck. They form up with the men in front dropping a knee. The Captain looks over the motley bunch of murders and cut-throats and begins a speech in a friendly tone:

Men, we been to hell and back, more times den we can count. But now we be get’n a glimpse of heaven and ye become yellow?

His voice is rising:

We begin a journey now, which will make us Gods!

He dials it back some, and then he continues:

But is no shame to be scared. But this voyage be requiring backbone and heart! So, I be offer’n a deal. Any man whom it pleases, may take the skiff of the Sandylee, a fair portion of stores, an his share of booty, and R free to make way to where ye wish.

The men grumble and murmur among themselves. Captain Black then issues a simple order:

All men who wish to part, stand to the left, those who wish to stay with me, move to the right.

This really is a lucrative offer. Their foul efforts have wielded a sizable kitty of treasure. Also, there is the fact that there will soon be little good food left, and as it is the beginning of the fair season, the chances of reaching places where they can live like kings, are good. But the deciding factor is the miracle of the fallen angel’s magic, and that, as much as anything, casts the final decision for each man. When they witnessed the reattachment of the being’s arm, it either filled a man with wonder, or it scared the living shit out of him! It is mostly on this line that the men make up their minds.

Mr. Briggs is first the go to the left. He is followed by about half a dozen more. Then more straggle over until it is about half and half, a dozen or so on each side. The Captain sizes them up and he seems pleased.

So, this be ye choice. Good and proper! But I would like to say a piece before our good riddance’s, and it be about Mr. Briggs.

Captain Black faces Briggs who is nearly sobbing.

Your torture and pain are plain to see, and quite understandable sir. Fore an angel from Heaven appears to you and you give it fire, and without order!

Mr. Briggs loses more self-control and weeps deeply.

The Captain continues his speech to Briggs and to all the others as well.

The weight of that action may never be shed, and only by pleading to God himself, might one ease the burden. Also, the fact that God, without formal explanation of dis action taken, may indeed curse us all in any of many horrible ways.

The men grumble and some seem to know where this is going.

So, we be have’n need of a spokesman, an ambassador to explain things, so they be no misunderstandings. I ask ye sailor, have ye been baptized?

Mr. Briggs, sobbing uncontrollably, shakes his head yes.

Good! Said the Captain as he pulls the space weapon from his belt and points it at Mr. Briggs. A bright yellow beam vaporizes the seaman, and so surprises Captain Black with its power, that he slips slightly with his footing, bobbles his aim, and all the men on the left disappear in less than a second and all that is left is a row of boots.

The remaining stunned men watch as the wave action, made one boot fall over.

You mens hade made dee right choice! Lady Jasmine yelled out as she had been watching from the open hatchway.

Those that remained start laughing, a little at first, then more and more until they are red in the face and slapping their thighs.

Ping, break out a barrel of rum! Ordered Captain Black and hoots roar out from his loyal men.

A grand celebration follows, and the spirits soar for the remaining men. After all, their share of the booty had just doubled, and so has the food stocks. Ping, the cabin boy is happy, no mess to clean up after the killing, just kick the boots, with feet still inside, into the water, which made the sharks happy.

A feast is prepared, with the cooking fires lit right on the metallic deck. The space mariners monitor the temperature of the fires through their interfaces with the ship’s systems and they know that the hull is in no danger of damage. Also, the pirates have been using the hull as a fine wet stone for their blades.

But Captain Black has something on his mind as he drinks, and when he is fairly hammered, he finds the courage to execute a plan of questionable viability. He calls everyone to order around the iron animal cage containing the Squishys, (the name the men had coined for the fallen angels) and it is clear that he has something of importance to relate.

The Captain is at the door of the cage, and in an exaggerated prose, he starts talking to the pair inside:

I

He said as he points to himself.

Will let you.

He points to the ‘male’ Squishy.

Out

He jiggles the lock on the door and motions with his arm the door swinging open.

And you

He points again to the male.

Will make the light

He drew a square with his arm in the exact spot of the floor that the light had appeared before.

And I

He points again to himself.

Will stay inside

He sits down in the center of the square.

His men gasp and food falls from some mouths. The shrill and angry voice of Lady Jasmine rings out.

Oh, no you don’t, Willy!

Only Miss Jasmine can get away with calling Captain William Casey Black, Willy.

Woman, I can, and I will! He shouts back.

What more, you be next!... Mr. Buck, unlock the cage.

Of course, the space mariners didn’t need the exaggerated description of the Captain because by this time, they understand the pirates almost fluently through their biological link that they share with the ship’s equipment.

With the Captain’s men poised to slay the alien if he strays from his task, he starts the procedure. In a moment it is over, and when the light subsides, Captain Black is a new