Where's the Loot?
A trader on the frontier of space discovers the bodies of pirates floating in and around a refuel and resupply port.
Where’s the Loot?
A trader on the frontier of space discovers the bodies of pirates floating in and around a refuel and resupply port. Does he run? Or does he investigate
Photo by Aleksei Sabulevskii on Unsplash
Cadence rises in his cockpit chair and peers out the front window. Frowning, he turns off his targeting systems.
Floating debris glints like grass in a morning frost.
Behind, to the right, is Cirridus, the local moon smudged with yellow and orange and half-sunken in shadow. Lights from outposts litter the surface.
Cadence reverses until he comes to a virtual stop. He cranes forward. A wing, in half, slowly rotates toward him. Painted on it, is a red 8-pointed circle; the sign of Guerilla Faction - pirates that patrol, if Cadence recalls correctly, the Esteon system, which is around 3 parsecs away.
Why are they all the way over here? On the other side of space?
He turns back on his targeting systems, and readies both his hull-mounted gatling gun and his twin-missile silos, tentatively pushing his ship forward.
Cadence enters the debris. Carefully, he weaves past strewn cockpits, broken gun barrels, and split wings. They seem to whisper to him, in the silence of space:
Go back.
Return.
You’re not welcome here.
His original destination appears: The Mint & Sons Space Port. Maps states you can eat, sleep, and refuel here. The bullet holes scaling the wall suggest otherwise.
Cadence hovers outside the main hangar. Ahead of him, from the entrance down the wide hallway, like a sparse poppy field, several bright red bodies are lit by his thermal scope. There must be at least ten of them.
Fuck. Go back, you fool.
He is about to turn his ship around, when he feels his temple pulse. He rolls his eyes and taps it twice.
It’s a MindMessage conversation he recorded between him and his wife. He set it is a reminder for 9AM Earth Time:
“The trees, they are the ones from Earth, m’Love. Willows, from olden times. They take so long to grow, so long. Not like most of my other stuff I have planned.”
Static fills the silence.
“M’Love?” She asks.
“I’m here.”
“Did you hear me?”
“How much do these Willow things cost?”
“It’s not the cost that matters, m’Love, it’s how they make me feel okay?”
He huffs, “I cannot just keep … buying things. If it’s always expensive, I’ll have to stay out here in space just-”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“What?”
“Oh my god. If you don’t get them … my mental health is going to disintegrate. Like dramatically I think. I wasn’t going to tell you this, but … but it was my therapist who suggested I get these trees.”
“The one you MindMessage when you’re in the shower?”
“You’re bringing that up again? Really?”
Shit, he remembers thinking, shouldn’t have gone there.
“Are you gonna answer me? Coward?”
“Don’t call me a coward you fucking whore! I spend my waking days and nights trying to plea-”
The recording ends.
Cadence gazes out the side window, at the moon. He imagines the smell of his wife’s hair; Earthy, like nutritious soil.
Fuck it.
Cadence aggressively parks his ship. He puts on his oversuit, and pauses beside the mirror in the lower deck. He twists the gun around in his hand and sighs, before marching down the stairs, toward the rear exit.
He jumps out.
Using a small controller in his left hand, he uses the thrusts on his oversuit, to direct himself further down the hangar hallway.
Cadence nears a floating body. The oversuit, to his surprise, is expensive. Thin streaks of adamantine gleam like rows of diamonds and the deep blues and purples of his visor shine brilliantly.
He passes three more bodies. The first two have the same suits with minor variations. The third one’s suit is more standard looking, black and grey, box-like, not too dissimilar from his own.
He reaches the sealed door, using the metal railing to keep him steady. He pushes the green button and pulls fruitlessly on the handle.
The facility has likely engaged its emergency locking procedure.
He then touches a screen beside the button, and a keypad lights up. Hmm, he wonders, sinking into thought; it is a simple index cipher, something he could probably solve on his own, but he only has three attempts. If he inserts his Epen but the code-virus is identified and destroyed, he’ll be permanently locked out.
After a couple of minutes, he chuckles.
He switches on his thermal scope. It is redder over the 3, 7, 8, and 1. Four numbers is much easier and quicker to solve than ten. Cadence gets to work. Within a minute the door zaps open.
He glides forward into a short, narrow hallway.
As the door closes and reseals behind him, he is dropped to his feet. The container is reinstated with oxygen and gravity. In his hand he feels the weight of his gun, on his body the weight of his suit.
In his mind, he feels the weight of the words of his wife.
No code is required on the next door. As he is about to tap the green button, he realises how vulnerable he is. He opens his visor. From the top section of his oversuit, he pulls out a gold cross.
He kisses it, kneels, and closes his eyes:
No harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent.
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent;
if you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
and you make the Most High your dwelling.
Standing, he puts the cross away, zips up his oversuit, and closes his visor.
He whispers, “The Lord is my Refuge,” and taps the green button. The doors shoot open and he hugs the left wall with his pistol raised.
Cadence is looking at an environment he has seen many times. A bar with stools. A lounge with luxury chairs. A large ‘spacelight’ with an arresting view of a planet, in this case, Cirridus, the local moon.
There are several more bodies, some at the bar, and others in the lounge area.
There is no movement or sound besides from the hum of the facility.
He silently approaches the bar, and notices a third type of casualty: The poor men and women who presumably owned and ran this forgotten Space Port.
He steps down a single step into the lounge, where scattered around are two each of the grey and black suited, and adamantine suited men. Cadence, with his pistol still raised, is about to try to identify one of them on the ground, when something groans.
Leaping back, he stumbles on the single step, and falls onto the floor, dropping his weapon. Scurrying on his hands and knees, he regathers it, and hides behind a stool.
“Who goes there?”
Another groan. Some coughing and spluttering.
“Who goes there!”
Inaudible words.
Cadence slowly rises, pistol raised. He ducks back down as he sees who it is. A man is splayed out on a lounge chair, blood everywhere.
Fuck. Come on you pussy.
He rises, this time more confidently, and slowly approaches, pistol aimed at the man’s head.
The man wears one of the expensive, adamantine suits.
There is an odd stand-off, until, after what feels like several minutes for Cadence, the man moans, “Visor, visor.”
“Do it yourself.”
“I … I … I can’t move …” His head rolls to the side. “I can’t move my arms or legs, please.”
Cadence doesn’t move.
“The … the button, on the side,” the man whispers, “please, I’m unarmed.”
Cadence grunts. With the gun pointed at his head, he tip-toes toward the man, and pushes the button.
The visor shoots up.
The man coughs out blood.
Some lands on Cadence and he takes a step back, disgusted.
The man's face looks as if it has been repeatedly punched. His eyes barely move beneath dark, bloodied slits. “Please,” he manages, “can … can I have s-s-some water?”
Cadence surveys the room. Wait a minute. There are two groups of men, all of them, beside ol’ chap here, dead. He smiles as the realisation hits him, “Where’s the last man, huh?”
“W-w-water …Please?”
“Where’s the last man standing? He’s gotta be somewhere.”
The man shakes his head.
Cadence narrows his eyes and is about to check the bedrooms behind the bar, when he spots a pool of blood, without a body, about a metre behind the man’s chair. He walks around the chair. Drops lead up the step, across the room to another sealed door that has ‘Fire Exit’ printed onto it.
He approaches the fire exit. Sure enough, on the security screen beside the door, one of the escape pods is missing.
He chuckles and returns to the lounge to gaze out the spacelight. He ignores the man’s continuous requests for water.
He knows very little about Cirridus. In fact, he knows very little about this entire sector.
But somewhere, down there, a man is on the run. His friends did well enough to allow him to escape.
Did he escape with the cash?
Well, it’s not here.
Cadence pulls a chair up, and sits facing the spacelight. Closing his eyes, he taps his temple, matching the rhythm of his wife’s MindCell. The sterility of the space port is replaced with the scent of recently dug soil.
He is standing in his yard at home. The grass is perfectly manicured. His feet sink into the soil. Birds sing in the trees above. Then he hears her, his wife, humming the same song, kneeling over a vegetable patch, her long hair flowing behind her.
This is a dream. Her dream. She has none of this stuff. No vegetable patch, no trees; most of the grass is dead in their real yard.
She is still asleep. Not necessarily a bad thing, he thinks; this conversation will likely be easier.
“Honey,” he says, fatly. He says it again, louder, not moving toward her.
She turns and looks at him as if for the first time. Her irises are their natural colour, deep brown, not the glitzy baby blue contacts she sometimes wears. “Who are you?” She whispers.
Cadence sighs. Not this again. He doesn’t have the time. It doesn’t matter anyway. When she wakes, she will remember he entered her dream - it is very rare she forgets; especially if he has something important to tell her.
Like when he’s getting her a new present.
“Honey, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry about the other day. I didn't mean what I said.”
Did he really not mean it?
“What?” She grows concerned.
“Erm, err; don’t worry, okay. I’m just here to tell you, that … that you know those trees you wanted? The willow trees?”
“Yeah!”
“Well, I can get them for you. These trees you dream about,” he points to the trees above him, unsure if they are willows or not, ”these trees - they will be yours. Yours!”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Her face ignites, but just as quickly, drains. She frowns, as if remembering something, and turns to kneel back over her vegetable patch.
He awkwardly puts his hands together, “Um, I’ll see you later honey.”
She doesn’t turn around.
“Ah, honey?”
“Yup?”
“I’m going now. I love you.”
“Oh, okay. I love you too. Bye.”
Over MindCall, she has recently stopped hugging and kissing him - but only in her dreams, not in her waking hours.
He cleans his molars with his tongue, before glancing around one last time at his yard. He taps the side of his head. Within the space of an inhale and exhale, in front him once more is Cirridus, the moon smudged with yellow and orange.
The man on the lounge seat is still moaning.
Cadence stands, makes sure his pistol is loaded, and walks casually over to him.
“Sorry ol’ chap,” He whispers.
He shoots the man once in the head, and once in the body.
“It is mine to avenge; I will repay. …" He says to himself, as he marches toward the hangar.
“... Says the Lord.”
Thank you very much for reading! If you enjoyed it, I’d love if you give it a like or a share or a comment; any of them help so much.
Have a great day or night.
Chur,
The Delinquent Academic
Great work. I'm glad you decided to post it.