Flyover Planet Ch. 11. New Quarters.

From assets to cargo but at least the pirates are human... maybe too human, maybe human enough.

Chapters One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen Pt. 1, Fourteen Pt. 2, Fifteen, Sixteen.
(Non-SF Flyover Valley starts here.)

Backer — of course it was Backer, that great hulking piece of baung-baung — had got a girl out of the girls' cage. She was hanging limply over an arm that was thicker than most men's legs, her heels dragging on the floor. He was pulling her along into a corner of the hold, fumbling at his clothes with his free hand. The cargo were yelling, shaking the bars of their cages. A girl with bright pink hair had gotten one thin hand between the bars and was banging the metal padlock against them in a hopeless attempt to break it.

Raglan crossed the hallway in three easy strides, slammed his billystick into the back of Backer’s head, putting his weight behind the blow, and grabbed the girl as the huge man collapsed.

"Put her over here, Cap'n," Doc was getting his scanner out. Raglan placed the girl on the large container Doc had indicated. She was out cold.

“Didn’t bust your gut running, didja, Doc?” Raglan said sourly.

“Seen your tappin’ skills before, Cap’n,” the old cuss replied primly. “You got quite a swing there. A man could get hurt, too close behind ya.”

Raglan shook his head and commed the bosun to come down with another man. The girl looked about eighteen or twenty though the records the geck had lifted said the oldest of them all was sixteen, and that had been the boy Backer had killed. But she was a hippy-lippy bit of goods, though young, with a body on her. Raglan swore. Scrap, been less than an hour since the cargo was brought on board. And they said being captain was an easy ticket to pie'n'plenty street...

"Hey! You bastards! Is she alive?"

The racket from the cages had stopped, all the kids glued to the bars, except two crying girls huddled together in a corner. A scrawny scrappy boy was staring at Raglan as if he wanted to murder him, fists clenched, an 03 standing blackly out against the pale skin.

"Is she all right?" another voice said, from the girls' cage. This was that skinny bit with the dumb hair, her eyes bright and unflinching on Raglan's, as if she was not in a cage but had a gun in her hands. If she was scared she was hiding it well. Raglan did not pay mind to kids as a rule, but he couldn't help noticing the eyes on the girl, a half-lidded deep look that was older than her years.

The doctor turned around.

“Banged up a bit, but she’ll live," he said loudly. "I’ll give her a mild soother, won't do any harm to the good stuff in her bloodstream.” Raglan nodded. The doctor took a quick blood sample and stamped the girl with the soother over the elbow vein, then turned to scan Backer.

The bosun, Two-Bit, was coming down the stairs at a brisk run, slowing down as he took in the scene. The deckhand he had brought whistled.

“I did tell him not to mess with the cargo again, Captain,” Two-Bit said ruefully.

Raglan gave a hard sigh. He did not blame Two-Bit. The Fair Heart was running short-handed. Usually having a bit of fun with a pretty wasn’t harming the cargo if the girl was put right back when it was done; unless she was a ransom or something. Raglan was not one of those high-class slavers that sold top bits of goods, carefully handled and sometimes even upscaled at the slaver's expense. He carried whatever and whoever he could grab wherever he could sell it fast and at a profit. But this cargo was special. Raglan hadn’t handled it himself, and Two-Bit had done things according to protocol, as cops did, and they had not a guard to spare.

“Backer’ll live. You want me to give him something for his head?” Raglan shook his head.

“I already gave him something for his head."

"Airlock him?" Two-Bit asked calmly. He was always calm.

"Not yet. Not with the lower decks unmanned," Raglan would have liked nothing better than to airlock the piece of scrap, once Backer came to of course, but he couldn't afford to. In the past two weeks it was four men down, none up; with Backer, four and half. And Raglan knew he daren’t take on any new crew till the cargo was off-loaded and he was far and away. After they were done with the cargo though... There was a death circus where they would pay good money for someone Backer's caliber, someone who might last a long time in the ring, maybe half the night. No, a living Backer could, and would, talk. So the airlock it would be, but later.

"He will stay on till Buda," he said. "Take him below and lock him up till he sweats the crazy out of his meatsack. Then you tell him I want him doing the mech work, keeping the waster working, and if he gives me no trouble till the end I will let him go, docking half the pay."

"Think he would believe that?" Two-Bit jerked his head at the body on the floor with a cheerful grin.

"You tell me, bosun. You are the ex-cop."

Two-Bit snorted.

"Yeah, he'd believe it. Got nothing but discard for brains."

"Yeah. Make sure he can get at the work down there but can't leave the deck. Lock the hatch real tight, you hear? And alert the crew, don't want anyone letting that rust brain out by mistake. Anyone needs to go down there, first tell me, and go with pulsers on medium, and at least two men." The bosun nodded.

"Yes sir, Captain."

"You want her in sickbay, Doc?” Raglan asked as Two-Bit and his assistant rolled Backer over a gurney, none too gently, and strapped him, pressing the lever that unfolded the sturdy metal legs and wheels.

Doc shook his head and pulled the girl up, slinging an arm over his shoulders. A little color was coming into her cheeks and she was beginning to moan softly. There was a ring of bruises blooming around her pale neck.

Raglan unholstered his pulser and set it to low.

"Can you carry her?"

For answer, Doc picked her up. He was not swaying, so he was probably not going to drop her over a distance of a few meters.

"In there," Raglan coded the door open. The cabin was barely big enough for all of them, but there was a place to wash and the waste worked. It would have to do. He was not going to repeat his mistake and leave the cargo out in the open like he normally did. No one was as dumb as Backer but still, no sense tempting the men.

The kids had raised a racket again, yelling "Fenny! Bring her back!" One of the boys was swearing so badly Raglan had to grin in admiration. For a little squirt he had quite a lot of scrappy words to share.

Doc disposed the unconscious bit of girl goods on a bunk. There were nine of them, coincidentally, just like on the Eds' little ship though Raglan did not know that.

He came up to the cages, glanced at the boys and the girls, then grabbed the arm of the girl with the garish hair. He put the pulser against her temple, nudging aside a long green strand. She did not jerk away, as he expected. She had even crossed her arms and straightened up, her number 11 standing out clearly on the back of her right hand.

"Quiet," Raglan said.

There was silence, except for the someone crying quietly, but that did not bother Raglan any.

"Now," he said in pacifying tone. "Your friend over there," he jerked his head at the open door, "she is going to be just fine. I'm moving you all in there, bit more peaceful that way. Alla you," he nodded at the girl he was holding. "I don't want to hurt any of you squirts, but I don't want any hazy-crazy either. So Doc here will open up the cages, and y'all will just file in there like good little soldiers, first the boys, then the sheilies. That clear?"

There was no answer but Raglan did not really expect one. He would not risk pulsing any of them even at the lowest setting but they were not to know that.

Doc opened the cage and the boys filed out. Raglan was impressed in spite of himself that they looked defiant. The youngest one looked a little scared but the other three gave him looks of burning hate as they filed into the cabin and stood milling at the entrance, eyes on him and the girl. Doc opened the girls' cage and led the two other girls out. The tech-mech one looked like she was barely conscious, eyes flickering in that unsettling geck way; the other one was crying. One of the boys almost grabbed her from Doc and pulled her inside, hugging her tightly.

"Now you, green bean," Raglan moved the barrel to point at the doorway, Doc stepping hurriedly away. The girl came out of the cage and gave him a long measuring look. She really had the most extraordinary eyes, with a greenish sparkle he could not interpret.

"You must be very brave, Captain," she said coldly, before turning away.

If she had not been cargo Raglan would have hit her. The intensity of his reaction surprised him. She was just a kid, a piece of cargo; he had been called lots of names before, and by angry cargo too; but there was something about the way she said Captain that stung him. His fingers twitched.

The kids were huddled together in the far corner of the small cabin, all except for except for the 03 boy who was standing in front of them, protectively, and the 11 girl next to him. She was still looking at Raglan with those eyes he could not read.

"Gonna be a bit cramped but you'll probably live," Doc said with a grin. "I'll come and check on you later, with your permission, Captain."

"As long as you take Two-Bit along," Raglan said. The girl was still staring.

"Well, what?" he asked, subtly irritated. "Got something else under your tongue?"

She raised an eyebrow, and, incredibly, said:

"You may go. I will call you if I want you." And she turned her back on him. The 03 boy never moved.

As Raglan coded the door shut and sealed it with his hand for good measure he found himself laughing softly. Crazy, he thought, and put the girl out of his mind.

They were past the first reactions, the tears and the hugs. XieXie had not cried. She had dashed an angry tear away and bit her lip, and that had been that. She did not even cry when they all said their prayers and spoke one for Linder. Now there were two angry spots burning on her cheekbones, and her eyes could have lasered through metal.

"What the scrap was that, XieXie?" Forseti asked softly. "That guy could have killed you!"

"I was so angry. I am angry," she said in a low intense voice.

Fenny was still sleeping, and so was Rotor, exhausted with terror, and the twin brother and sister whose names were still unknown; their numbers were 79 and 88, but no one was going to call them that. Guns was sitting next to Forseti with her head on his shoulder, eyes flickering weirdly in the gloom of the cabin. There was only a thin line of glow along the edges of the middle bunks and a little glow panel by the door, with another on the ceiling.

"And he wouldn't kill us. Not yet," XieXie said in the same cold voice she had used on Raglan. "He was furious with that...that..."

"Ruster," Cheers helpfully supplied, and to Forseti's surprise, for XieXie never swore, she repeated:

"That ruster, yes. For hurting Fenny and for ... For Linder." Her voice wobbled a little and she gripped Forseti's hand convulsively, but there were still no tears. Forseti felt vaguely that this was wrong but there was nothing he could do about it.

"Look," XieXie leaned forward. "I don't know a lot about ships and such, you two do. The one we were on and this one —"

"Well, we haven't seen either from the outside but the Eds' one was probably small, something for short distances, going by the room and the absence of crew," Forseti said thoughtfully. In spite of the horror of the last several hours his head felt clearer than it had for days before that. The ship's doctor had given them all patches, but just one each, not several at a go. They had been given some food too, and while it tasted awful, some warm gooey mess with chunks in small bowls, it was different from the Eds' food concentrate and injections that they were usually given instead of a real meal. It was bad, but it was food.

"And this one... I mean, it's obvious these are free traders—"

"Pirates, you mean?" XieXie asked.

"Right," Forseti used to like pirate stories, sometimes dreamed of himself as Pirate Seti, Lord of Space, when he was little. Now he could not make up his mind whether he hated the Eds or the pirates more. "So that can be any old ship, but the hold where we were, and this, that kind of looks like," the name of the maker and the model would tell XieXie nothing, so he simply said, "looks like a medium-sized ship for, you know, a crew of maybe twelve. They got crew quarters on the upper deck at the back, their bridge, and a galley and sickbay on this level, on the sides, and a belowdecks for all the—"

"Mechanical stuff, right. All right but what I'm getting at," she leaned in, lowering her voice, "on the one hand they managed to, I guess, rob the Ed ship. So we are cargo to them, one of them even said it."

"So either someone wanted us, or they—" too late Forseti realized that he did not want to finish that phrase but XieXie finished it for him.

"They grabbed what they could, and they will be selling us off. We are lab material, aren't we? To them."

If only we had guns, Forseti thought. Even pulsers. If only I was older and bigger and stronger. If only—

But XieXie had an intense look on her face.

"So the two ships, this one looks dirty, banged up; is it tougher than the Eds'?"

Forseti's mind kicked into gear.

"They must have something on the ship that..." He glanced at Guns, dreaming with her eyes open next to him. "A geck?"

XieXie was silent for a few moments. Then she said, very softly:

"Can any ... geck fly a ship?"