Pirates
Christopher Stasheff
THE MERCHANTMAN JABBED at the marauder with a spear of light—but the smaller ship leaped aside, almost seeming to disappear and reappear. The huge Terran vessel jabbed again, this time with its rear cannon, but the tiny marauder danced away, mocking them.
“By all that’s holy!” the navigator swore. “Only a quarter our size, and we can’t hit them! What’s the matter, Captain? Don’t your boys know how to aim?”
“I was top gunner at Target, Lieutenant,” the first officer snapped back. “But these aren’t exactly state-of-the-art lasers—and I only have two of them. Damn that mosquito!” He jammed the heel of his hand on the firing patch.
On the screen, light blossomed where the smaller ship had been a half second before.
“This is a liner and freighter, Lieutenant,” the captain said heavily. “We only carry minimal armament—not like that Navy ship you pushed until you signed on with us.”
“If I’d known . . .” the navigator muttered—but he broke off, because the Khalian destroyer was suddenly much larger in the screen, and swelling.
“He’s inside my guns!” the first officer yelled. “I can’t lock onto him, he’s too close! How the hell . . . ?”
A grinding crash jolted the whole ship. The captain was the first to recover enough to pull his webbing loose, crying, “Pass out small arms to every able-bodied passenger, and fight for your lives! That ship just grappled us! They’re going to be cutting through and boarding, any second!”
The crew scrambled to their feet, broke open the gun locker, and headed out into the passenger compartment, arms full of weapons.
They were barely into the cabin before a section of wall blew in. Passengers screamed as sinuous Weasel shapes materialized out of the cloud of smoke, ruby beams stabbing out at the crew.
The navigator howled and went down with a hole through his chest, exactly circular and neatly cauterized. The navigator and captain dodged aside, dropping the extra weapons and snapping shots at the invaders. One speared a Khalian through the shoulder; the creature screamed but caught the gun with its other hand and fired. The captain leaped back toward the bridge, and the Khalian’s beam scorched the wall. But the first was firing, enough to make a Weasel duck before he shot back. The beam reflected off the officer’s insignia and cut a furrow through a passenger’s arm, setting her sleeve ablaze. She screamed, and her husband shouted, batting out the flame. Then a slug thrower cracked, and a hole appeared in the wall right near the captain’s head. He returned the fire, and a Weasel shrieked—but so did the passengers as they felt the wind of atmosphere swooping toward the hole in the ship’s side and the vacuum beyond. Then the slug thrower cracked again, and the first dropped, blood spreading out from his shoulder.
But a large, bulky shape rose up behind the pirates, a civilian in a business ensemble, drawing out an old-fashioned blackjack and clubbing at a Khalian. He connected, and the Khalian tumbled just as it squeezed off a beam at the captain, a beam that scribbled across the hull and went out just before it reached another screaming passenger. The captain’s own beam speared the largest Khalian, sending up smoke from leather armor, but the Khalian howled and shot back, and the captain tumbled, his gun falling loose.
The big civilian swung at the armored Khalian.
Another Weasel swung his arm up, deflecting the blackjack with a yell, and the big Khalian swung around in time to see the sap swinging toward him again. He screamed and ducked down, hurtling forward, and knocked into the big human, jolting him back into the aisle and shredding his jacket with sharp claws. The human started to lift the blackjack again, but five needle-sharp talons poised over his face, and the Khalian shrilled, “The course of wisdom is to relinquish your weapon.”
The Terran dropped the blackjack, as much from astonishment as from fear, and the Khalian erupted into the squealing hiccups that served as the laughter of his race. “Yes, you are startled to see that I speak such excellent Terran, are you not? But then, warrior-in-disguise, I was a translator in our Khalian Intelligence during the war. And you? Surely the only one of these monkeys who dared fight must have been a warrior once. What is your name, what was your rank?”
“Sales,” the Terran ground out. “Lohengrin Sales. Lieutenant Commander.”
“Ah, yes! The quaint custom of your kind—to give name and rank only! But was there not something more? A number? Yes, you Terrans are numbers as much as names, are you not?” And the Weasel gave his shrill, piping giggle again.
“And you?” the Terran grunted. “Your name?”
The talons danced dangerously. “Be wary, Sales. I honor you for having fought, but not so highly as to give you the power of my name. You are vanquished, after all.”
“No.” Sales spat. “We conquered Khalia.”
The claws darted down, but halted a fraction of an inch from Sales’s eyes. He kept his face carefully immobile—and was shocked to see that the Khalian was doing the same. The Weasel had exercised self-control!
“You did not conquer,” the Weasel hissed. “Some few of my more tenderhearted countrymen were infuriated to discover that we had been deceived by our supposed allies of your kind, the Syndicate, and in their anger allied with you.” The talons danced again. “Is that not so?”
Sales ignored the glittering points. “If you know that, why have you attacked us? We are not of the Syndicate! We are your allies!”
“No, not mine,” the Khalian hissed. “Alliance with an enemy? Never! I, at least, would not accept such dishonor! See what comes of it—monkeys like these around us, thinking that Khalians did surrender! No, never will I be party to so disastrous an alliance! I will die fighting you, if I can, as I should have before the truce! And all of my crew wish to do so, too. But we will take as many of you as we can, first! We will slay you all, any of your race! We will punish all humans—the Fleet, and its Terran sheep—for killing Khalians.”
“It is wrong,” Sales gritted. “Deaths in war should not be avenged during peacetime.”
“Peace has not come for me! The war has never ended! Rightly or wrongly, the only safety for Khalians is punishing those who kill Khalians! And we will slay those of the Syndicate, for exploiting us—suborning and then betraying us. We will bring you all down to death, or dishonor.”
“Your own people have commanded all Khalians to lay down their arms! If you do not do so, you will be an outlaw.”
“An outlaw,” the Weasel agreed, “never to see my ancestral hold again, never to feel the earth of Khalia beneath my feet, never to scent its sweet breezes!” The talons danced, and one drew a line of pain down Sales’s cheek. “You are unwise to remind me of this!”
Sales ignored the pain, and the alarm that fed it. “The ways of wisdom do not always accord with the ways of honor.”
“Honor, yes. Honor demands signs of victory.” The Khalian’s gaze darted down to Sales’s chest, and his snout split with a grimace that was a Khalian smile. His other hand moved at Sales’s throat, and the Terran tensed, but the Khalian laughed. “Softly, Sales, softly! What is a strip of cloth, after all, against a life?”
Everything, Sales knew—to a Khalian. Any sort of trophy taken from one of them was dishonor. But he was a human, so he lay frozen as the Khalian whipped the brightly colored band from around his neck. “Is it not pretty?” the Weasel cried, then whistled the same phrase in his own language—and his crew laughed with him.
They sounded like a psychotic calliope, Sales thought. He knew what the big Khalian had said to his men, because he knew Khalian as well as the Weasel knew Terran.