NASTRAGULL: Pirates (7 page)

Hours turned into days, and days into weeks. Alec and his friends lost count of time. The lights never dimmed, so they had no idea of the ship's daily cycle. People came and went at all hours, and they slept whenever they could. Their misery was horrible, and the cramps were regular and agonizing. From time to time, pirates came down to taunt and tease them; and every time, Alec's friends screamed and cursed while threatening the pirates with the most painful, undignified deaths they could think of. Alec didn’t. He remained subdued and kept a low profile, slumping in a submissive posture, taking the pirates' taunts without saying a word. It took everything he had to do it; he
wanted
to be defiant, but he
needed
them to think he was beaten. They'd get theirs.

Most of the time Myra and her guards kept the pirates in check, but once a pirate managed to get too close. He looked Sal, Tech and Mat over with an evil smile on his face. The pirate's name was Gor,
and he reeked from alcohol and cheap drugs.
Grinning maliciously,
Gor
removed his oily black shirt, revealing several scars and a bar code tattooed onto the right side of his chest, along with the Nastasturus Unicorn symbol. He murmured into Mat's ear in a low, threatening voice that everyone in the block could hear: "Look what your beautiful Federation has done to me, you bastards. You invaded my world and turned me and my people into slaves for your mighty army." He spat in Mat's face.

But Mat didn't even flinch. Instead, he glared at the pirate in contempt and said calmly, "And now you are a traitor and pirate scum," in his gravelly voice, before spitting in Gor's face.

Furious, Gor slapped a button on the side of the slave block, and the seats on the device folded down. The bars holding their arms and legs in place didn't. Their wrists and ankles snapped like dry twigs; but the crackle of bones fracturing from the pressure was overwhelmed by their loud screams of pain. Gor roared with laughter, his mad eyes never leaving the three prisoners as they hung from the stocks in helpless agony. When he moved over to Alec and Andrew's side, he stared at them with a cold glare, nothing human left in his eyes. Alec swallowed, a chill running down his spine.

Suddenly an alarm sounded from the slave block's life support system—but it was nothing near as loud as Myra's curses as she rushed into the hold, trailing both a guard android and medical android. The guard android quickly slid between Gor and the prisoners, as the medical android plugged an arm into the slave block, accessing its records and returning the bench to its original position. Myra arrived, her face flushed bright green, and slammed Gor into a bulkhead. "What the hell are you doing, you useless fuck!" she screamed. She shook him until his teeth rattled. "Answer me, before I have you skinned alive!"

Gor shouted back, almost incoherently, "Their evil federation put me and my people through hell! It's my right, it's my..." He gave out a mad scream and flung himself on Myra, who was so taken by surprise that she crashed to the floor with Gor on top of her. He grabbed one of the short but heavy leather whips from her belt and yanked it away; it had a wicked-looking hook at the end. Before Myra could react Gor leaped up and slashed away at Alec, tearing away part of his left eyebrow. Alec screamed as blood gushed down his face, obscuring the vision in that eye...but he never moved a centimeter, lest the collar activate. 

Myra smacked Gor off his feet with one huge hand, sending him crashing into the two Oman guards who had just arrived to subdue the altercation. All three crashed to the deck, and shortly Myra was on top of them. She shackled Gor and subdued him with a hard punch to his face.

"Take this crazy fool and throw him in the brig," she ordered, "and have Lieutenant Hughes charge his account for whatever credits this mess is gonna cost by the time the butcher is finished with them. And get her down here ASAP."

Some of the crew had already started to attend to the injured prisoners. Andrew, the only one who wasn't injured, growled, "The butcher?"
             

Myra rolled her eyes. "The medical officer, dear. Did you think this little medical andy would be able to fix you up all by itself?"

After the attack by Gor, the Nastasturus cadets received better treatment. Even the Captain himself came down to see them—but he was only making sure that his cargo remained intact and undamaged. He looked with pride on his prisoners. Most of them sat staring back at him, still defiant—except for one of the young prisoners, who was slumped in his stock with downcast eyes, and seemed almost to be whimpering. Zuzack shook his head in disgust and contempt, then loudly told the android guard to secure the slave block to prevent any unauthorized access.

After that, Alec and his friends were allowed to talk to each other without any punishment. Probably every word they said was being recorded, but they talked anyway; somehow it made the long hours go faster. Still, time crept by very slowly. They were attended once a day by a medical android, which impersonally clamped a large hose to their mouths and force-fed them a grayish paste manufactured to satisfy the needs of all known vegetarian and omnivorous sentients.

That didn't mean it was appetizing. The stench of the paste reminded Alec and his friends of something that had died and lain in the sun for several days. More of the paste was hurled up rather than swallowed, but the android didn't care; whenever that happened, it would just force more down the victim's throats until a satisfactory amount had entered the biological system.

After Gor's visit, Sal, Tech and Mat were taken away for a few days to be healed by the ship's doctor. Soon enough, they were returned to their places in the slave block. Alec's eye was a mess. The physician had just frowned at his injury when she saw it, then slapped the skin back and spat on it as she rubbed on a dollop of white lotion that had burned like hell. By the time Sal and the boys returned, Alec could no longer see out of that eye, and the wound was terribly infected, oozing pus and a clear serum. His brow burned with fever, his head a solid mass of pain. From time to time he lost control and began to scream, and his friends tried to calm him with soothing words. Most of the time, though, they treated him with contempt.

Once a day they were showered clean by the sprinklers and, sometimes, water hoses wielded like weapons by bored pirates. The water was recycled, tasteless stuff and didn't include anything like soap or disinfectant, so though it sluiced their bodies clean, it didn't really do anything about the smell. It was cold, too, and when it dried it left them tormented by an itching sensation all over their bodies.

During one of these cleanings, a high pressure stream hit Alec's wound, opening it up. He woke up from a dull sleep with blood and pus pouring down the side of his face. He didn't scream this time, even though it was agonizing, and he had stopped making any noise at all long since; he was simply too beaten and exhausted. All he could do was carefully turn his head away, ever so slightly, and try to protect the injury from the water jet.

He noticed a faint scent of flowers, as of perfume, and looked up. For the third time he saw the young and very attractive pirate, Alexa, standing before him.

She wore a pale gray coverall decorated with dark stains, matched by smears of grime on her face. No matter; she still looked astonishing. She had braided her long black dreads and fastened them in a messy curl on the back of her head. Distantly, Alec noticed that she was shifting from one foot to the other, looking very nervous.

Alexa looked up towards the second level, where Myra was sitting behind a large tented window inside a small guard tower, observing the VIP cargo room. They nodded at each other. Myra looked down at her left hand, upon a beautiful necklace made of bright, shining stones, and smiled as she thought,
Young fool in love. Ha!

Alexa approached Alec with something shiny in her hand, and he wondered, dully, if this was the end. But she passed the thing over the side of his head and it started beeping; some kind of med scanner? She cupped his chin in a firm hand, and he tried to pull away, only to be shocked by the collar; and she started as if it had been she who was shocked. She dropped the medical instrument, but was able to snatch it out of the air before it hit the ground; Alec was impressed. Then she brushed her hair out of her face, and gave Alec a puzzled look, mixed with a bit of disappointment.

"Please relax," she said softly. "I'm not going to hurt you, really." When Alexa took hold of his chin this time, gently but firmly, he made no resistance. She began to fold up Alec's eyebrow back to where it should have been, causing him to pant and shudder in pain. She hesitated for a long second before continuing. "No painkiller. Sorry," she murmured as she lifted the skin flap back to its original position. She clicked a switch on the medical instrument and aimed a warm, bright beam at the injury while holding a white cotton swab under it, removing the scab carefully, sopping up the blood and pus as it came. She leaned over a bit and got closer to his face, a grim expression on hers.

Alex, trembling, became aware of her strong, feminine scent, and somehow it relaxed him. She was too close for him to see anything but a golden blur with his good eye; the black-haired beauty was either wonderfully tanned or had a natural dark bronze skin tone. He slumped, and began enjoying her sensitive touch on his bruised body.

When she was done she stood up and leaned back with a concerned expression, examining her work. She apparently decided that he needed more work with the medical instrument, so she grabbed the injured region again—not nearly as carefully as he should have. Alec emitted a quiet snort of pain. Alexa stopped and whispered, "Whoops!" Then she leaned forward and started the process over again.

Alec muttered back, "Who are you calling 'whoops"?
Let me out of this shit, and I'll give you whoops."

She ignored his confused remark and snapped, "Hey, you, please try not to shake so much. You're making the wound open again."

After that, Alec stared straight ahead and remained silent. Alexa continued her ministrations for a few more minutes before she straightened and pronounced with satisfaction, "There you go." He noticed that she was standing with her fists clenched, pushed into her sides, and vaguely wondered why. She tilted her head to the side. "It's not perfect, but at least you can use your eye again. It'll leave a small scar for all your girlfriends to admire."

"Don't have any girlfriends," Alec mumbled.

"Perhaps you don't like girls," Alexa responded.

"Of course I do, I love girls, I..."

"Always put my foot in my mouth," Andrew interrupted softly, and he and his friends in the slave block shared a moment of laughter. Even Alexa smiled, a little.

Alec blushed a little; his head was already clearing up. "Thanks, bonehead," he grumbled at Andrew.

"You guys always this nice to each other?" wondered Alexa.

"Only at times like these," Sal replied.

"Great, look what you've done. You woke up all of the bastards," Alec whispered.

"Sorry. Are you
jealous
now?"

"Jealous about who, you? Ha!"

Alexa looked at him icily—and perhaps with the tiniest bit of disappointment—and then started to gather her things up into a small box.

Tech whistled and sang out, "
Id
-i-ot!"

Alec looked at Alexa, puzzled, as she began to walk away. "Oh, hey, wait a minute, please. I'm sorry," he croaked.

Alexa turned and looked back at Alec. "Sorry for what? That I'm a pirate?"

"Well, yes, that. But, but..."

Alexa nodded angrily, and then she hurried away.

"Way to go, bonehead," Mat rumbled.

"Wait, wait, I want to thank you," Alec shouted, as she disappeared into the depths of the dimly-lit hold.

"Told ya. You always put your foot in your mouth," Andrew observed, followed by another round of laughter from Sal, Tech and Mat.

"Shut up!" Alec shouted. But he was angrier at himself then he was at his friend's comments.

Now that he felt half-human, he could talk to his squad mates again; it had been a while. Days, he figured. "It's about time they got you some treatment. I was getting sick of all the pissing and moaning," Sal teased.

"Yeah, but at least it was entertaining," observed Tech.

Andrew said, "Especially compared to the delicious, gourmet meals we've enjoyed on this somewhat wild but absolutely free cruise. I have to say that's gotta be the worst part...and I must add that…"

"What the hell did you just say about the food?" Alec demanded.

There was a brief silence, and then everyone but Andrew began to laugh. Andrew muttered in a falsetto tone, "Barbarians! Do you
really
like this shitty food? Uncultured ruffians!"

This time, they all laughed. No matter the hellish predicament they faced, the team simply enjoyed each other's company. But the laughter invariably masked nervousness, shock, and despair.

Myra relaxed inside the security tower, listening to a classic Oman opera while examining the necklace with pleased eyes. Occasionally she listened to a word or two of the young VIP prisoners' conversation, but she really had no interest at all. She glanced down at Nina, who was kneeling between her legs, pleasuring Myra with her tongue while caressing the lizard-woman's thighs and using one of her index fingers to depress a small tentacle next to Myra's three navels.