Drew held her head between her hands and tried to make the screens in front of her come into focus. Through the fog of pain, she was about to decide that there really was such a thing as having too good a time.
Van set a steaming cup of liquid in front of her.
"I told you not to drink that Get Outtah the Truck Bitch. You get sick every time you drink them.
"I am aware of that, Van Gar." Drew spoke carefully, so she wouldn't wake up the sharp pains in her head again. "After all, you only said 'I told you so' seven hundred times last night while I was throwing up my liver and spleen."
"Well, that's seven hundred and one, then." He worked at keeping the smile off his face. "I've just about got the mess cleaned up now."
"I don't know what I'd do without you."
"Drown in vomit?" Van suggested.
"What a pleasant thought," Drew said with a snarl.
She let her head flop on the console in front of her, and then fought the wave of nausea that washed over her.
"Oh! Please! There couldn't possibly be anything left in my stomach. Oh, never again, Van. Tell me. Did I make an ass of myself?"
"No more than usual."
"Did I dance naked anywhere?"
"Just topless. No one seemed to notice."
"That's always comforting. Did we have sex?"
"No," Van said with a laugh. "Not unless you consider holding your head outtah the toilet to be fore-play."
"You will tell me if we ever have sex, won't you? I mean, I'd hate not knowing." She groaned loudly. "Oh, God, Van! I wish I would just die and get it over with."
"No such luck, babe. Drink your medicine, you'll feel better. I'm going to go finish cleaning up the mess."
"Oh, that's right. We couldn't have the ship messy when the royal bitch gets here. Go ahead—abandon me in my hour of need . . ."
"Your hour of need was about three o'clock this morning. Why have you already decided to hate this woman?" Van Gar pushed the cup closer to Drew, and she picked up her head and made a face at the smell.
"There's just something that galls me about the thought of royalty. The idea that someone is better than me simply by right of their birth. Like being born is something you have any say in. I mean, what happens? Does a sperm scream out, 'No! no. Don't put me in that wretched pussy, I want to go in that Royal cunt!' I don't fucking think so."
Van Gar laughed. "You're a twisted bitch, Drew." Still laughing, he left to go finish cleaning up the ship.
Drew waited till he was out of sight, then she stumbled over to the disposal chute and tossed the Chitsky's hang-over remedy away. Then she went back and sat down.
"I feel better already," she mumbled, looking at the empty cup.
She decided that no matter how hard it might be, she was not going to let Erik know she was hung-over.
"So! You must be Drewcila Qwah," declared a booming male voice.
"Why? Doesn't anyone else want to do it?" Drewcila answered, as she spun around in her chair to face her boarders. "And besides that's Qwah as in my way!"
"Excuse me?" Facto asked.
"Drew's attempt at humor, I'm afraid," Erik said.
"Stop screaming," Drew said holding her head. "I've got a headache."
"And I'll just bet I know why . . ." Erik started.
"Are you sick?" Taralin asked with real concern.
"Get Outtah The Truck Bitch," Drew answered
Taralin looked taken aback, and Erik laughed nervously. "It's the name of a drink," he explained.
"Are you trying to say that she's hung-over?" Facto asked in disbelief.
"Hey! Erik! I thought you said this guy was dumb," Drew said.
"I never said that," Erik assured Facto.
"I am Taralin Zarco, and this is my chamberlain Facto." Taralin tried to change the drift of the conversation.
"How come you get two names and he only gets one?" Drew asked suspiciously.
"Drew! For God's sake!"
Erik threw up his hands in defeat.
"I took on the name of my husband when we married . . ."
"Cause ah him being King and all, I suppose?" Drew was tired of making idle chatter. She turned back to the console and gave them directions over her shoulder.
"You'll find your quarters down the corridor and to your left. You can't miss it. There's a big sign made outtah cardboard that says 'VIP Quarters'. I made the sign myself."
There was no doubt in any of their minds that they were being dismissed. Facto grabbed the two small bags and headed down the hallway, and the Queen followed him.
"Pleasure to meet you," Taralin said, turning at the doorway.
"Uh huh," Drew grunted out.
"What the hell are you playing at, Qwah!" Erik screamed when he was sure they were out of hearing range.
"Hey! I made 'em a sign, didn't I?"
"You're a God damned smart-assed little bitch," he screamed, his face turning red.
"And you're a hairless, pencil-dicked old fuck," Drew said calmly. "But I love you anyway."
Erik took a deep breath and counted to ten. "What's that awful smell?" He asked after a second.
"Did you ever smell a Get Outtah The Truck Bitch?"
"Yeah."
"Well, that's what it smells like when it's been recycled."
Zarco had never been to Vares 7 before, and he decided he hadn't missed much. It was the least inhabited of Vares's eighty moons. Really nothing more than a spaceport, consisting mostly of hotels which had rooms which weren't much better than the accommodations on most ships. There were restaurants which looked like they might get shoveled out once a year, and there were trading posts. The trading posts seemed to have a little bit of everything. People traded what they didn't need for what they did. Or more than likely sold it, so that they would have enough money to get drunk, laid, or both at the most prominent business on Vares 7; one of the fifty clubs which littered the main street.
The only people who ever came here were riff-raff and Salvagers, if there was really any distinction between the two. Zarco didn't think there was.
Vares was a pit, a cesspool of a place on the edge of the cosmos, where the dregs of space congregated to share their diseases. But that was a large part of the reason they had decided to pick Taralin up here. He, Zarco, was dressed in normal spaceport clothes, and they were using the least impressive of his twenty private ships. He had given orders that no one was to know that he had left the palace, much less the planet. But he knew that was no guarantee his enemies wouldn't find out that he was gone. Things had a way of leaking out, even when you took every precaution. A servant told a friend. The friend told his wife. Before you knew it, everyone knew. But no one would even consider that he would be coming to a place like Vares 7. No one would believe he would come to such an awful place.
He still wished their reunion didn't have to be in such a horrible place, but he wasn't willing to take any chance that his enemies might stop his reunion with his wife. He wasn't deluded enough to believe that he no longer had any enemies. Winning a war didn't decrease your enemies, it increased them. If anything, they became more vengeful. There were always going to be those who would not admit to defeat. Those who had lost loved ones and were hell-bent on "justice". If you lost someone in a war that you won, their death seemed somehow justified. But if you lost the war . . . well, it just seemed like a waste.
Still, as he looked around him, he couldn't help but feel that meeting her in this place seemed a high price to pay for safety.
"Sire, I believe this is our hotel," Fitz informed him.
Zarco looked up at the three-storied building and frowned.
"Are you all right, sire?"
Zarco nodded yes.
"We married on the sands of Dradious, with the crystal clear waters of Uratis behind us. I just wish our reunion could take place someplace . . ."
He kicked a piece of something that might have once been fruit out of his way.
"Someplace cleaner. Less detestable." He forced a smile. "I'm fine, Fitz. I can't wait to see her again. To embrace her."
Taralin walked onto the bridge. She was fascinated by all the flashing lights, the buttons and screens. She knew nothing about how these things worked, but she imagined that it must take a certain amount of intelligence to operate something like this ship. She hadn't had much chance to travel, and this was the only time that she had felt like she had full run of a ship. Take off had been a little rough, and she had stayed strapped in her EV chair longer than she really needed to. But as soon as she'd gotten her space legs, she had started touring the ship and had finally wound up here.
Drewcila sat at the command console and pretended like she didn't see the other woman.
"How long will it take us?" Taralin asked.
"Sixteen to eighteen hours."
Drew stared at the screen harder.
"This is the biggest ship I've ever been on," Taralin said.
Drew raised her eyebrows. Now that didn't sound right. She'd seen presidential ships, and they were huge, flamboyant things. Surely a king would have as good—if not better. She shrugged—who could figure royalty?
"It's freighter class. I have some pretty big shipments. Junk takes up a shit load ah space. Bulky and heavy. The Garbage Scow is seventy-five percent hold, fifteen percent engine and ten percent living quarters."
"Where do you live, when you're not on the ship?" Taralin asked.
Drewcila looked at her like she was a complete imbecile.
"I'm a Salvager."
It was obvious that Taralin didn't understand the significance.
"Yes, so?"
"What do you live in—a bubble? I'm a Salvager. I live on the ship. I spend all my time in space, running junk from one planet to another. It would be kind of stupid for me to own a house somewhere. Not to mention boring. How the hell do you people exist in one place? It's no wonder you're always fighting amongst yourselves. You're fucking bored outtah yer skull."
"But don't you ever wish you had someplace to call home? Don't you ever long for our home planet?"
Drew thought about it for only a second and then shrugged."No. The Garbage Scow is my home, and all of the universe is my back yard. I can't imagine living any other way."
Drewcila punched half a dozen buttons on her panel, and watched the screen for the effect. She nodded in a satisfied way. She punched a button all the way to the right of her panel.
"That's got it, Van."
"Good. It's hotter than the hubs of hell down here," a voice spoke back out of the console.
"What was the problem?"
"A fucking rat chewed through a couple of the wires."
"Which ones?"
"The blue one and the green one."
"What's the green one do?" Drew asked shortly.
"How the fuck do I know? The coating was off it. I taped it, I killed the fucking rat, and I'm coming up," Van screamed back.
"Touchy! Touchy!" Drew laughed.
"Was that why take off was so rough?" Taralin asked.
Drew shrugged and smiled.
"Who knows? Guess we'll find out next time we take off."
"I hate fucking rats," Van Gar said.
His voice startled Taralin, and she swung around to face him. She took one look at the alien that had walked onto the bridge, let out a screech and jumped back. Almost at the same time she became aware that he was wearing the same uniform that Drewcila Qwah was. She felt like an idiot.
"I'm sorry," Taralin and Van Gar said in unison.
Van Gar laughed and walked over to her, holding out his hand.
"A pleasure to meet you. My name is Van Gar and I have the misfortune of being Drewcila's first mate."
"Some men will believe any story ya tell em," Drew mumbled.
"Ah," Taralin reluctantly took his hand. "I am Taralin Zarco. It's . . . ah.. nice to meet you. I'm afraid you startled me a little."
"I would imagine that my appearance would be a little startling to anyone who hadn't had the opportunity to meet a Chitzky before."
"Brown noser," Drew said, punching buttons for no better reason than she was bored. "Don' buy his line ah shit. He's as big an asshole as I am."
"Believe me," Van Gar hissed, "no one can compete with you when it comes to being an asshole."
Van Gar glared at Drew, and she grinned back and stuck out her tongue. Van ignored her.
"So, I would imagine that you're excited about seeing your husband again."
"I don't know if you'd call it excited . . ."
"Lousy lay, huh?" Drew guessed.
"And so she proves my point," Van Gar said shaking his head.
Drew shrugged, got up and walked to the cooler. She dug through the ice, pulled out a can, threw it to Van, and he caught it instinctively."You, Queenie?" Drew asked.
Taralin shook her head no.
Drew grabbed one for herself, then launched herself into her seat, opening her beer at the same time without spilling a drop. Drew looked at Van to see if he had witnessed the elegant execution of this act. He held his thumb up and grinned.
"So, is he?" Drew asked after a long pull on the can.
"Drew! You're such a shit head!" Van Gar cursed.
"Is who what?" Taralin asked a bit confused.
"The King. Is the king a lousy lay? You know, is he bad at the bad thing? Does his willy not tickle your twat?"
Taralin looked at Van, who seemed to be much easier to talk to than his employer.
"She wants to know if the King is good in bed," Van interpreted.
Taralin blushed scarlet. Then stammered out. "Ah . . . that's just the problem. I don't remember."
"Well, I'd say that speaks volumes!" Drew laughed.
"You're . . . Fuck you, Drew!" Van Gar stomped of the bridge.
"Wonder who tied his shorts in a knot?" Drew asked with a shrug.
"You don't understand," Taralin said. "I don't remember Zarco at all. I didn't even know who I really was 'til two days ago. They told me that the Lockhedes removed part of my brain. That I can't ever remember. Those memories are gone totally. I don't remember being Queen. I don't remember my parents, or my sister. And I don't remember him. Not at all. I don't even remember what I was like before they did this to me. I've been waiting tables on Jors for the last five years. That's all I remember. Now I'm supposed to go be Queen, and I have no idea how to be a wife much less a queen! I'm afraid Zarco is going to be terribly disappointed."
"Ah, Fuck 'em!"
"Excuse me?"
"I mean . . . Look, if you meant so much to him he should ah come after you before this. If someone took Van Gar, I'd go after him. And I wouldn't stop till I found him—and killed them in a really horrible sort of blood-gushing way. I mean, he can be a moody pain in the ass sometimes, but he's my moody pain in the ass! And it wouldn't take me no five years to get him back!"
"But they explained that to me. He didn't have a choice. The country was at war, and . . ."
"Ah, that's a fucking cop-out if ever I've heard one. He probably found someone else to fuck, and then he just wasn' in any hurry. I know men, honey. Take my word for it. They're all the same. I don't care if they're royal or not. No man goes for five years without getting his willy wet."
Taralin was blushing again. "I don't think he's that kind of man. They say he loves me. That he has mourned for me . . ."
"I guess that's the difference between a King an a normal guy. A normal guy has to make up his own bullshit stories. Listen to me, an you'll be OK. Ride this Royal shit for all it's worth. You've fucking been through hell, an he owes you. I'll tell you what I'd do if I were you. I'd put me an industrial sized ice cooler under the Royal throne, and I'd hire me about half a dozen naked dancing boys with pecs of death and dicks that hang to their knees. And when I got bored with that, I'd get me a bunch ah money outtah the Royal safe and I'd buy me half a dozen of the fanciest freighters you've ever seen. I'd become Queen of the Salvagers, that's what I would do."
She took a long slug of beer and checked the instrument panel.
"But . . . That would be wrong. Shouldn't I do the best job I can to be a good wife, and to serve my people?"
"Honey, all you know how to serve them is a hot cup of Java. As for wrong. Well, wrong is kind of a relative thing, isn't it? I mean, who's to say it's any more wrong than a man leaving his wife to rot in a hole like Jors for five years while he screws everything that moves."
"He didn't do that!" Taralin said.
"Does he have a dick?" Drew asked.
"Of course he does!"
"Then take my word for it. He's been balling every bimbo who ever wanted a piece of Royal meat."
Taralin didn't want to follow this line of conversation any more. Besides, there was something else she was curious about.
"Are you and Van Gar, well, are you a couple?"
Drew was a little shocked by the question.
"Van and I?" She laughed nervously.
"Well, you did say you'd go after him."
"That's what I git for bein' nice," Drew mumbled. "Van and I have never made the beast with two backs. Not that I remember, anyway. We will have to one day though," she said matter-of-factly.
Taralin was confused by the resolve in the other woman's voice.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because that's what always happens when men and women are friends. They get really close, but they always avoid sex because they know it will ruin their friendship. But all along they both secretly know it will happen. They keep waiting for the right moment. That moment when they think they may be able to pull off having sex and not have it ruin their friendship. In the end, they give up and wind up having sex when they most need the closeness. Then he never forgives her because she must not have thought he was any good in bed, or she wouldn't have been able to stay out of it. And she never forgives him because he didn't fall in love with her.
"And that's what's going to happen to you and Van Gar?"
Drew smiled broadly, and stood up. "No. Because I already know that Van loves me. And I always go back for seconds."
She strolled off the bridge, beer in hand.
Taralin watched her go with a feeling of dread. This reunion was not going to go at all as she had planned.
Zarco leaned back in the cheap hotel chair, and hoped that it would hold him.
"Are you sure you were not followed?" He asked the man who had joined them only moments ago.
"I am," the man assured him.
He looked nervous, and for the first time since Zarco had been told that Taralin had been found alive he felt true dread at what his enemies might have done to his wife.
"You saw Taralin?"
"Yes. She didn't remember me."
"What? That doesn't make any sense, Holm! I mean . . ."
"The Lockhedes did a very cruel thing to Your Queen and to You, my King," Holm said solemnly.
"Is she mad, Holm?" Zarco asked quietly.
"No, sire. She is as sharp as ever she was."
"Disfigured, then?"
"I have never seen her look more lovely."
"Is she . . . Is she barren, Holm?"
"Sire, there is nothing physically wrong with Your Queen."
"Then she is mad."
"Sire, please allow me to finish. What I should have said is that the damage is not obvious. The Lockhedes operated on her brain. They removed her memory. She has absolutely no memory of her life before her abduction . . ."
Zarco sighed with relief.
"I thought it was something serious," he laughed. "The moment she sees me her memory will come back to her . . ."
"Sire! Please listen. They removed that part of her brain. She can never remember, not ever. It's simply not there anymore."
"But she will remember, Holm," Zarco smiled. "You are younger than I, and have not yet felt the kind of love that lasts more than a night. She will see me, and she will remember."
Zarco looked at Fitz. "She must remember."
Drewcila and Van Gar sat on the bridge.
"So, do you believe that shit about losing half her brain?" Drewcila asked
"It could happen," Van Gar shrugged.
"Maybe she's jus puttin' it on so that she doesn't have to fuck 'im. You know, kindah like 'Not tonight, dear, half my brain is gone.'"
"You are such a sick, skeptical bitch. I can't believe that you, of all people, wouldn't believe her story . . ."
"Ah, come on, Van. A girl shakes her hips the right way and you believe she's virginal. If I was her, I'd be looking to take this fucker down. And what better way than to say 'I don't remember where the Royal safe is, I don't remember the combination', and then when they believe you, Wham! Bam! Thank you ma'am! You take every fucking dime from the kingdom, and head off for parts unknown with Joe-Joe the horse-hung boy."
"See, that's what I'm talking about. This guy could have had a perfectly good reason for not coming after his wife before now."
"Yeah. Like he's boffin' the serving girl, and the upstairs and down stairs maids." Drew laughed. "Meanwhile, she's waiting tables on Jors for five years with half a brain."
"She didn't say she only has half a brain. She certainly does not seem like a half wit."
"My point exactly. It's all an act."
"Just because you are a vindictive bitch doesn't mean that everyone else is." Van Gar shook his head.
"I am not a vindictive bitch. Well, I may be a bitch, but I am not vindictive. I simply have a very strong sense of justice . . ."
"You've already tried this guy and found him guilty. I think this guy really does love his wife, and that he just couldn't find her. If he didn't love her, would he be paying twenty thousand iggys to us, and God only knows how much to Erik?"
"You've got a point there," Drew said, thinking for a moment. That was an awful lot of money. "Ah, but how do we know that isn't just a spit in the bucket for him?"
"I swear Drew, you would find bacteria in the milk of humanoid kindness," Van said. "Do you always have to be such a pessimist?"
"What's with all the labels, Van? Are you really mad at me, or are you just trying to increase your negative vocabulary?"
Van Gar laughed. "You're impossible."
"If I was, I wouldn't be here."
The ship rocked violently. Drew looked at Van Gar.
"The green wire goes to the detection system," they said in unison.
They jumped to their feet, spilling beer everywhere and ran for the gun cabinet, where they grabbed the two biggest, ugliest rifles they had and started at a dead run for the cargo bay.
Facto stepped out of his cabin.
"What's going on?" he asked, stepping into their way when he realized they weren't going to stop. "What is it?"
The ship lurched again, and they were all thrown into the wall."We're being boarded," Van Gar told him, regaining his footing.
"By whom?"
"By fucking Boy Scouts! Who the fuck do you think?"
Drew shoved past him.
Taralin stepped out of her cabin, and Drew saw iggys falling into a bottomless pit.
"Get her and go lock yourselves on the bridge. Don't open the door for anyone. The ship is on a set course, and with any luck you'll reach Vares 7 before they can break down the door."
"What is all this?" Taralin demanded.
"Pirates. We're being boarded," Van Gar told her. Then chased after Drew, who had already started back down the hall.
"No! Wait!" Facto started to go after them, and Taralin grabbed his arm.
"There's nothing we can do, Facto. I have faith in her ability to deal with this."
"But, my Lady . . ."
"Let's do as we were told."
Van Gar and Drew stood on either side of the door to the cargo bay.
"Ready?" she asked.
"Let's party. I'll take point."
Drew punched a button and the doors opened. Van Gar jumped through the door and opened fire. Drew came in after him, and the door clanged shut behind them as someone returned their fire. They ran for cover behind a pile of transformers.
"Fuck." Van Gar took a deep breath. "I count five."
"Seven," Drew corrected.
She jumped out from behind the pile, opened fire, and then jumped back.
"Now there's five of em." She grinned. "Man, I hope you dumb fucks don't bleed all over my scrap!"
"Fuck you!" someone yelled back.
"Hey! You can't talk that way ta me! I'm a lady!"
She looked at Van."Shall we?"
"You take the left; I'll take the right."
"On three."
"One, two, three."
Drew ran around the left side of the junk, and Van Gar ran out the right. He dodged behind an old truck, and she dove behind a bin of copper wire as a blast went past her. She lay on the floor, still for a moment.
"Fucking up my junk," she mumbled as she started crawling on her knees and elbows. She grinned when she poked her head around the corner of the bin and saw the two guys perched on the top of an old nuclear regulator.
"Kiss me, fuckers!" She fired a hail of bolts on them, and they fell together from their perch. She heard gunfire from the other side of the cargo bay.
Van Gar saw the two men fall and made a dash for the airlock doors. The doors were open, and coming through the tube which the pirates had connected to the hull of the Garbage Scow, Van Gar could see reinforcements from the pirate ship. He couldn't risk firing at the pirates while they were in the tube. If he ruptured the sides of the plastic tube, both cargo bays on both ships would be instantly and explosively depressurized. He stepped to the side of the door as the men inside the tube fired on him, and quickly loaded a nasty looking projectile into his weapon. He counted to three, jumped into the doorway, and fired over the heads of the boarding party, into their ship. Then he ran for the airlock control button.
The men in the tube knew what he was up to, and they ran faster in an attempt to get into the ship before the doors closed.
Van Gar punched the button. It made a grating sound.
"Fuck fuck," he looked around the opening, and someone fired at him out of the tube. "Damn, damn," he slammed his closed fist into the button. It started to close, but much slower than it should have.
"Open it, fur ball."
Van Gar felt something very hard and very cold against the back of his head.
"Buddy, I just launched a nerve gas canister into your ship. If I don't close this door, we're all going to die."
"Fucking liar."
Van Gar heard the man's finger moving towards the trigger. Then there was a gurgling sound, and the gun fell away from his head. He turned and the guy was just staring at him. Then he staggered a little, and fell to the ground, sliding off the bayonet of Drew's rifle as he did so.
Van Gar smiled at Drew. "What took you so long?"
"I broke a nail. Cover me."
Van Gar nodded.
She put her weapon down, pulled a tool from her pocket, and pried the cover off the control panel.
"You better fucking hurry. If they make it to the airlock . . ."
"You worry so much."
She snipped a couple of wires and twisted them together, apparently oblivious to the shower of sparks which erupted at her finger tips.
Van Gar heard feet hit the airlock floor, and then the doors hit high speed and slammed shut, leaving a hand flopping around on the floor.
Drew made a face. "Ugh! I hate it when that happens."
She played around with the wires, trying to override whatever the pirates had done, so that she could first close the exterior doors just enough to break the pirates' tube seal and suck them all into the vacuum of space, and then close the door completely. She could hear them banging on the airlock door. Either they thought one of their buddies would open the doors, or they were just plain desperate.
Drew was working as fast as she could when Van tapped her shoulder.
"You can slow down. I wasn't lying about the gas canister. They got maybe five minutes before the gas reaches them."
"You send a control beacon at the same time?"
"Well, of course," Van Gar said indignantly. "What do you think I am, a rank amateur?"
He saw the man on top of the stack of rubber tires.
"Fuck! Drew!"
He shoved her to the ground and opened fire on the man as blasts rained down all around them. The man flew back through the air, screaming all the way to the floor.
"You OK, Drew?" Van Gar asked, looking around carefully for any other attacker.
"Yeah," she groaned. She stood up and went back to work on the controls. "Keep an eye out. There should be one more."
"Hey! You little fucker! We know yer in here! Ya might as well come on out an make it easy on yerself," Van screamed.
Behind him he could hear the sound of the exterior doors closing, and Drew picking up her weapon. To the lone pirate, that sound must have been like hearing his own death screams. This guy had nothing to lose.
"I'll check this way," Drew said.
They split up. Ten minutes later, they met at the cargo bay doors.
"I counted seven bodies."
"Me, too," Van said, sounding disappointed. "We must have hit the last one with random fire."
"Too easy?" Drew asked.
"Yeah. I hate it when they finish before I do."
"I hate this." Facto hissed through clenched teeth.
He looked around the bridge and wished that he had any idea what any of the flashing lights or sirens were indicative of. He kept walking around, looking at various screens and trying to get any meaning out of the jumbled letters and symbols that looked back at him. Wishing that any of the data was in a familiar language, instead of code.
"We have no way of knowing what's going on. I should have gone with them. I should have."
"That's not going to change things one way or the other, Facto. Try to relax."
"Relax. This woman is a lunatic!" The words had barely cleared his lips when the doors opened and Drewcila Qwah strode onto the bridge.
"Now, now, Fatso." She knew that wasn't his name, but it wasn't much more stupid sounding. "Is that any way to talk to the people who just saved the Royal piece ah ass?"
She flopped into the control chair and leaned her weapon against the console beside her. Van Gar was not far behind her. He rushed in and sat in the navigator's chair directly across from Drewcila, and their fingers busily flew over their respective keyboards.
"Our coordinates have been re-established, and we are prepared to continue our course," Van Gar reported.
Drewcila just nodded, her fingers caressing the keyboard as if it were a lover she knew well. Finally she smiled.
"The beacon has been activated, and we now have full control of the Purple Cat."
"A purple cat?" Taralin asked.
"The pirate ship," Van Gar answered. Then he turned to Drew. "With the gas on board we don't have to worry about anyone stealing it."
"Stealing it? But it's . . . Isn't . . . Doesn't the Space Patrol have to make a report? Isn't that ship evidence?" Facto said.
"Hello! Hello!" Drew screamed. "Are we living in the same universe? According to Article twenty-six of the Salvagers' Code . . ." she cleared her throat and intoned: "'If you find it, it's yours.' And Article number Six of the Space Patrol Code states:" she cleared her throat again and quoted: "'Any derelict ship containing a Salvager's beacon shall be considered the property of said Salvager under Article Twenty-six of the Salvager's Code.'"
"So what just happened?" Facto demanded. "How were they able to board us in the first place?"
"A rat chewed through a circuit wire and fouled up our detection system. But how they board—now that is really quite ingenious. What they do is match your ship's speed exactly, then they shoot out this tendril and it grabs onto your ship like a huge suction cup, and . . ."
"I'm sure they can wait for the book, Van Gar," Drewcila said shaking her head. "Look at this shit." She transferred the data on her screen over to his.
He was going to take a glance at the screen and say "so what", no matter what she had transferred, just because she had pissed him off. But when he saw the read-out, he couldn't control his excitement.
"What is this? Most pirate ships are held together with baling wire and used gum," he said in disbelief.
"Yeah, well, not this one," Drew said. "Look at their weapons system. We're damn lucky they didn't fire on us."
"Look at the fucking third level. There's a fucking whirlpool on it . . ."
"If I might be so bold . . ." Facto started.
"I wouldn't, if I were you," Drew hissed back. She was checking out her new acquisition, and she didn't want to be bothered. Facto made a rude sound and stomped off the bridge, making as much noise as possible.
Taralin followed quietly behind him.
"I thought they'd never leave."
Drew went to the cooler, finding that it had slid all the way across the control room. She dragged it over to her chair, sat down, and started rifling through the contents. Soon she pulled out two beers and two cigars. Handing one of each to Van Gar, she leaned back in her chair, sniffed her cigar, and smiled.
"It's a whirlpool."
Van wiped an imaginary tear from his eye.
"I'm so proud."