But she had thought of an alternate way. It was deadly dangerous, but this was a desperate situation. She passed right on through the baggage compartment and dropped out of it on the far side of the bubble, out of sight of the pirates for the moment. There was the little drive unit.
She picked it up and wrestled it around so that it pointed down the center of the baggage section, the way she had come. “Down!” She cried. “Flat!” She braced herself as well as she could and turned it on.
“Someone shoot that brat,” she heard the Horse saying. Then the rocket came on.
A blast of propulsive flame shot out of its aperture, shoving her violently back against the rear lock. She spread her legs, fighting to maintain her balance, hanging on to the monster. The fire spread in a narrow cone, singeing the netting and packages of the center of the bubble and bouncing off the rim of the front air lock. Then her grip slipped, and the drive cut out.
“Get their weapons!” she screamed as she struggled to reorient the drive. She hoped the blast had fried the standing pirates, and missed the fallen children, but she couldn't see its effect through the expanding smoke.
She heard Hope's voice. “Spirit!” Then there was a thump.
She pushed the switch on again. The frame erupted, and now the metal of the drive was hot, burning her hands, but she hung on regardless, as long as she could before her damaged flesh could no longer do the job and the drive went off again. The bast of hot air around it stung her eyes so that she could no longer see, but she bluffed: “I'll burn you all if you don't get those pirates!”
There was a scramble at the other side of the bubble. Then Hope called again. “Spirit!”
Blindly, she lifted the hot tube and aimed it by hope and guesswork. She found the switch, and felt it blast again. But she couldn't hold it, and in a moment it bucked from her grip and stopped. She lay on the deck, unable to do any more.
She heard people coming. Who was it? She had done all she could.
“Spirit!” Hope cried. Then she knew it was all right. She let go of her dwindling consciousness.
When she woke, she was in agony. She felt the burns on her hands, arms, and face. But she was able to move, and to see; she had been singed, not destroyed. Hope had the pirates captive, and was trying to decide what to do with the Horse.
She had hoped that brute was dead. But maybe it was better this way. She knew what to do with him.
She held out her left hand, which was slightly better off despite its missing finger because the bandaging had protected it to a degree. That bandaging was gone, but her stump wasn't bleeding, maybe because of the ferocious heat.
Hope put a laser pistol into it. The contact stung her hand, but she gritted her teeth, aimed it at the Horse's crotch, and pulled the trigger. He screamed as smoke puffed out. She held the beam there until she was sure his groin was bare of all external flesh, then dropped the pistol. She had castrated him, avenging the rape of her sister Faith. The destruction of Helse's body. The man might live or die, but he would never do that to another maiden.
Spirit and the other burned children rested, trying to heal, while Hope and the well ones cleaned up.
Hope saved the plastic key, putting it with Helse's wedding tag, HELSE HUBRIS. They had survived, losing no more children, but they had suffered, and it was not a happy occasion.
Hidden Flower
Things steadied for the next two weeks. No more pirates came, and the burned skin scabbed over and healed. Naturally they got bored. So they found a diversion: making Hope into a girl. He was starting to grow fur on his face; they made him shave, and get into a dress, and put a red ribbon in his lengthening hair. They made him don pantyhose, and feminine slippers, and wear a padded halter. The idea was to enable him to pass for a girl, in case pirates came to kill any men they found. The risk had to be taken seriously.
Spirit donned male clothing and postured as a boy, gleefully ordering him about. “I am here to stop you from getting raped, unless you really want to be. Say 'sir' to me, sister!” The other kids laughed as if that were the humor of the century, though Hope didn't seem to find it quite as funny.
Then another ship was sighted. They ran for their space suits, not having time to change. Spirit and Hope were the fastest, because they had drilled specifically for the decompression stage; the others were younger and had less practice, having inherited their positions by random survival.
“You sure look cute, sister,” Spirit teased Hope. “In your ribbon.” She saw him try to remove the ribbon from his hair, but his suit gauntlets were too clumsy.
There was a crash, and then another. “They're shooting at us!” Spirit cried, and jammed her helmet closed.
Hope did the same. They were just in time; a third shot holed the bubble, and the air sucked out. They were drawn along with it, but managed to grab on to things and delay their flight until the air was gone.
No others were in motion. The children had not been in time for this devastatingly unexpected attack.
They were dead.
The pirate ship docked, and used the airlock. Suited figures appeared in the bubble and began checking around.
This must be a pirate salvage operation, looking only for supplies and parts, not rape or slaves. Spirit and Hope grabbed armfuls of food packages, pretending to be looters. With luck the real pirates would not know the difference, since all of them were similarly suited.
They carried their burdens to and through the lock, and made their way into the alien ship. It had docked side-fashion, rather than nose-on, and they found themselves in a vertical central tube. This was a Navy ship, with a cannon at the nose instead of a civilian lock. Yet it was obviously a pirate.
Unused to this layout, they had to grab on to handholds, letting their packages fall outward. This gave them away, and the pirates quickly made them prisoner. But they took Hope for a girl, and he had to play the part, while Spirit maintained her role as a boy. It was a weird reversal, but maybe for the best.
They faced the pirate captain, who wore a Naval uniform. This was a renegade Navy vessel, a deserter from its assignment.
“You are young,” the pirate officer said to Hope. “But that perhaps makes you cleaner. You will serve one man per night, commencing this night. You will cooperate gladly--”
“No!” Hope cried, horrified with better reason than the pirate officer could know.
“Otherwise your little brother will be flogged--by the man you do not please--and you will go without food or water till the next. I believe in time you will cooperate willingly enough.”
Spirit quailed. This was not remotely funny any more. These brigands obviously knew had to make a girl perform.
The pirate medic sprayed Spirit's stump with a plastic bandage, and took away her finger whip.
Fortunately he never thought to check her gender.
They were put in a bedroom suite. For a moment they were alone, while the pirates drew their straws for the first liaison. “We're in trouble,” Hope said in a gross understatement.
“You're in trouble, paleface!” she quipped. But she turned serious immediately. She knew what she had to do. “I can take your place. We can change clothes--”
“No good,” he said. “They won't fit.” But she thought his objection was more than that.
“We could make it dark--”
“I won't stand by and watch you be raped!” he said.
She sighed, relieved on one level. “That too, of course.”
They tried to make some wild plan for escape, but it seemed hopeless. Then a bearded pirate entered the chamber. He grabbed Hope and fell on the bed with him. Spirit had to admit that Hope looked just like a girl, with his skirt flaring up as he fell, showing legs that looked nice in their panty hose. But the masquerade was about to be brutally unmasked.
“Kife,” Hope said.
That stopped the pirate instantly. Spirit had inquired, and learned from Hope what that was about; Kife was some sort of super-pirate who used ordinary folk as couriers, and took dreadful revenge against anyone who interfered with a courier. Helse had been a courier.
Hope quickly followed up with a scary story of what Kife had done to the last pirate who interfered, freaking out the would-be lover. Soon they were back before Captain Brinker. Hope continued to play his scene; he was really good at that. He parlayed this into a private interview with the captain--then asked Spirit “Do you remember Helse's secret?”
She was puzzled. Was he referring to the way Helse had masqueraded as a boy, hiding her gender identity? “I remember.”
“Another shares it.”
In a moment she caught on. The dapper captain was a woman!
Hope played it out, revealing that all three of them were in reverse gender. He had to show his masculine parts to convince her, then bargained for freedom for the two of them: set them loose in a stocked lifeboat, and they would not reveal the captain's secret to her crew.
It worked--to a degree. The captain agreed to let Hope go, but kept Spirit as a hostage.
Hope didn't like that. “Make another offer,” he said curtly.
“No other offer,” the captain said, now assured that Spirit was important to him. “I may neither kill you nor let you go entirely free without imperiling myself. It must be all or nothing--or this. Take the compromise--or the consequence.”
“Hope, she means it,” Spirit said. “Do it. She will not harm me, for I have the same secret. I can be the cabin boy, and I will not be molested. You must go free, to complete your mission.” That was nominally his job as courier for Kife, but actually his best chance to survive.
Still he balked. “My father, my mother, my fiancée--all sacrificed themselves for me!” he exclaimed in anguish. “You are all I have left, Spirit! I can't let you go!”
That tore at her heart. He had always been the biggest thing in her life, her idol, her love. It was gratifying to verify that he cared so much for her. But she was perhaps more practical than he. This compromise had to be. “Hope, I said I would die for you. This is not nearly as bad. We may someday meet again.”
She felt the tears on her face, for once not ashamed of them.
“Agreed,” he said at last to the captain, almost choking over the word.
The captain nodded. It occurred to Spirit that the captain might actually like the idea of having female company; it couldn't be easy being the one member of her gender on a pirate ship. Certainly this seemed safer for Spirit than exposure or destruction.
They fashioned a device whereby Spirit would make a break for it, take the ship's self-destruct mechanism hostage, and win freedom for her “sister.” It seemed viable, if the three of them played their parts correctly. But she felt constrained to give warning. “One thing,” she said to the captain. “If my brother doesn't make it safely away--”
“You will do what I would do in the circumstance,” Captain Brinker finished.
“Yes.”
“Spirit isn't bluffing,” Hope said.
The captain smiled grimly. “I think we shall get along.”
Probably so. Spirit had learned to be tough minded, especially when dealing with pirates. If Hope was betrayed, she would not hesitate to destroy the pirate ship if she could. She would have nothing to lose, her life being worthless without Hope. The captain was in a roughly similar position. They had to trust each other, not because of any conceivable friendship, but because of their mutual dependency.
“Beloved sister,” Spirit said to Hope. “I love you.” Then she kissed him with a passion that perhaps disconcerted him. She knew she might never see him again.
He turned to the captain. “You will see that my brother is well treated,” he said, his voice cold.
“You can be sure of it.” Captain Brinker was no gentle creature, but she understood. There was no bluffing in any of this; they were all killers. The penalty for betrayal was death.
They played out their charade most convincingly. The two of them exchanged one final look, and Spirit wondered almost irrelevantly whether Hope had really believed it was Helse he had last clasped in his sleep. How could he not have known? Was it possible that he desired Spirit in the same way she desired him, but had to play a charade to indulge that passion? Was it after all a mutual secret?
Then Hope turned and moved toward the lifeboat. Spirit remained with her hand on the destruct lever until the lifeboat detached and jetted away from the mother ship. When it was out of range of the ship's guns, she finally relinquished the lever. It was theoretically possible to pursue the lifeboat and blast it out of space, but that would not get the girl inside for pirate use, and would represent an open violation of the captain's publicly given word. It wouldn't happen.
Thus it was that Spirit became a member of the crew of The Hidden Flower. She found the name of the ship intriguing, for it described the Captain. Was that coincidence? Who had named it?
Brinker took the lever and secured it as if this were routine. “Now we shall go to my cabin,” she said tightly. “Your life is spared, boy, and neither I nor any member of my crew will harm you. But you are now a member of this crew, my cabin boy, and if you fail to perform efficiently and loyally, you will be subject to standard discipline. Do you understand?”
That meant anything from verbal rebuke to execution, but normally was a beating on the back with a given number of whip lashes. Spirit would never be required to bare her back, because her front would show. “Yes, sir,” she said.
“You will never again touch the destruct lever.”
To ensure that the captive boy did not try to renegotiate the compromise now that his sister was safe.
“Yes sir.”
They went to Captain Brinker's cabin. “I believe you will serve as agreed, and I will treat you well as long as you give me no reason for discipline. But we must establish ground rules. You are inexperienced in pirate operations; you will make mistakes. You will accept prescribed penalties boldly or with tears, but never will you remove your clothing or indicate in any way that you are not male.”
“Never,” Spirit agreed.
“Because if your secret is discovered, so may mine. My crew will know that you could not have concealed your gender without my knowledge, and that I am therefore suspect. That will be death for both of us.”
“Yes sir.” This made sense. The captain was taking a risk. The cabin boy would be sharing the captain's private accommodations, such as the head, and of course in sleep something was bound to show.
“Except--”
Brinker's tone was deadly. “Except?”
“If some freak accident betrayed me, I could say that you knew all along, and kept me for yourself. So you had no need to take regular women.”
The captain considered. “That I have not taken women because I have found none to my taste. I want a guaranteed clean one. So I have said before.”
“Such as a young one, shared with no one.”
Brinker nodded. “Exception accepted. But it would be much harder to protect your person if your gender were known; there would be restlessness in the crew. The men do like their indulgences. I will take death before betrayal, and would give you to the men for continuous use.”
“Yes, sir. I will not betray you.” She hesitated. “My elder sister was well endowed. I may become so. So someone may suspect, in time.”
The captain considered again. “We shall strip.”
They stripped. Naked, Brinker was a fully formed woman, using a chest band similar to the one Helse had used to mask her upper development. Her posterior was shapely but small, so did not give her away.
“You sister was more endowed than this?” Brinker asked.
“Yes, top and bottom.”
“Then we have perhaps a year before you become difficult to conceal. In that time I will arrange to obtain a ship's whore. That will alleviate possible interest in you.”
“I hope so, sir. I am not trying to threaten you, only to acquaint you with my liability.”
“Understood. If you are discovered, you will have to indulge the men. I can limit it, but not eliminate it. So you must be prepared for that.”
“Yes, sir. If I am discovered, I will serve as I have to, without revealing any other secrets.”
The captain nodded curtly. “Now you will learn to urinate like a man. Observe and do likewise.” Brinker brought out a small section of tubing. Spirit realized with a small shock that it was an emulation of a penis, complete with attached scrotum. “This is an adapted dildo, normally used by women who crave penetration without a man.” She put it to her cleft, so that the curved back of it made a tight fit. Then she walked to the suite's head section and stood at a urinal. She urinated, and the urine emerged from the forward tip without spillage. “When you are away from this cabin, you will on occasion urinate in the ship's regular head, in this manner. Any man there will know you have a penis.”
“Yes sir,” Spirit said, impressed.
“Now you do it. Here is your penis.” Brinker gave her a different one.
Spirit tried, but didn't hold it quite right, and urine leaked out around the edges.
“You will use this every time,” Brinker said. “Only when you never leak will you use it elsewhere.”
“Yes sir.”
“You will wear these.” The captain brought out a kind of uniform. It included underpants with a stuffed crotch, and a chest band.
Spirit donned it, and looked in the mirror. She looked even more masculine than before, especially with her slightly bulging crotch. It would do.