POLAR OPPOSITES

POV: Newman

Blackness.

Pitch Blackness.

Sound stopped.

Except for the air recyclers. The constant whirr signaling the life sustaining 80/20 mix of nitrogen and oxygen pumped throughout the ship was the only emotional life preserver to grab onto. And then, it, too, stopped, leaving his personal universe dark and inert.

Every safety procedure on surviving hard vacuum flooded through his mind only to be discombobulated by a rising panic. Space travel was completely safe until it wasn’t. Then, it was crap shoot.

~ Helmet. I need to get a helmet.

Newman thought trying to shut down his fear with logical thought. Nice on paper but of little use in the real world. The real world of air sucking space enveloping you in a manner of seconds.

~ Helmet. Get a helmet, Moran.

Newman hadn’t listened to most of the safety briefings when he first boarded the inner system puddle hopper. No need. As an AI Negotiator, fully enhanced, he had taken a casual scan of the on-board systems. If there was an emergency, he would be able to refer to those scanned files. In an imagined emergency, that made sense. In a real emergency, panic and endorphins scattered cognitive thought like a boulder dispersing water in a bucket.

~ Calm down. Bring up the files. Review where you are now and where the nearest emergency lockers are.

~ Got it. Outside the cabin and down the corridor.

Except in the unnerving darkness, Newman had lost perspective. He didn’t know where he was in space anymore. He only knew where the deck was because he was still anchored by his mag boots.

~ Where was I in relation to the space around me when this all went bad?

He steadied his breathing, calmed the torrent of tensions coursing through his mind and brought up a schematic of his location. He was in a communications bay and had just finished offloading data from his last job to the client. Newman had just stood up to leave when the lights went out. With a quick reach behind him, he touched the rim of the cubical wall separating each individual coms-bay. This oriented him enough to apply the schematic in his head to his place in space.

~ Ten steps walk to the door. Turn left in corridor and another 20 steps to an emergency locker.

Piece of cake.

Then the entire ship shuttered. Silence, then the echoing sounds of things attaching themselves to the ship’s hull.

~ They were being boarded. Pirates.

Newman figured he had less than a minute before a hull breach. Once that happened, there was no knowing how long the stagnant air would last.

There were two types of pirates – those after cargo and those after slaves. Neither was good. Those after cargo usually blew out specific compartments on the outer hull to discharge as much of a ship’s air as possible. Those types of pirates liked for everyone inside to asphyxiate before entering. Less mess if everyone is already dead.

Those after slaves, disabled systems and disoriented a ships company making the task of evaluating each person’s value on the slave market easier.

There was a third, actually; those that took slaves and cargo. Salvage it was called. None of the above was good for Newman. He was of high value. The embedded rings around his wrists marked him as either a Data Broker or AI Negotiator, either was very profitable for the slave trade.

~ Walk. It won’t matter if you suffocate.

But maybe that would be best. Newman had heard many stories of how persons stolen and forced into bondage were treated. Humans may be an advanced race but that didn’t mean they were enlightened. The horrors they visited on each other had changed very little over the millennia, but the tools had improved.

~ Walk.

Newman walked the slow unstick, re-stick pattern required of mag boots on deck floors. Releasing and floating in zero-g was not an option. He could float right by the emergency locker and never know it in the pitch black of the ship.

Another shutter through the hull and then the lights came on again. The air recycler was still quite but Newman could now see where he was. Then the elations of sight evaporated with single word.

“Attention,” blared through the ship’s intercom.

That was not the captain’s voice.

“Every scumbag on this boat is to assemble … in the cargo bay … now. Don’t stop to pick anything up. Don’t think you can play hero and win your ship back. If anyone plays stupid, I’ll take out your drive, turn the lights off again and destroy your air recyclers and scrubbers. You know what happens then?” There was an evil laugh before he spoke again. “We leave you to die and come back after everyone has bloated and turned blue. We still get what we want. So don’t be stupid. Cargo bay … now!” The last order was barked out.

A familiar cackle echoed inside his head.

~ Hero. Do you even know what that means?

~ Shut up, Mary. Newman spoke back to the AI in his head he’d been married to for far too many years.

POV: Sylvia

Slug throwers … beam weapons; more trouble than they were worth in a zero-g close quarters fight. In the old vids everyone blasted away at each other and their weapons never pierced the hull. In reality, slugs or beams compromise a ship’s integrity, leaving both boarders and boardies in a very difficult position.

Combat out here, man to man or woman to man, was best practiced up close and messy. A long blade or a sharp knife is always better. A laser’s power dissipates very little and only spreads wider with distance. And that could damage any ship in its path, including hers.

Sylvia focused on the task at hand. In front of her was Borse, her weapons officer and most skilled in up close and cut off your manhood tactics. They both held rubber knifes rubbed in chalk and wore black work out clothing so each strike would leave a mark giving a clear picture of who was winning. Mostly, when Sylvia worked out, her opponents looked like a pissed off cat dunked in white paint had gotten the better of them. Today, her mind wondered. She couldn’t focus.

~Damn.

Borse landed another grouping of three to her clavicle, mid-section and throat. Borse was skilled enough to pull back at the last minute on the throat so as not to injure his Captain. Sylvia was good, among the best on her ship of merry marauders but she had her off moments as well. Up till this point, Borse’s blade was the only one that could touch her.

“Again,” she barked.

“If you wish, Captain. But I have better things to do than embarrass you,” Borse said, the tinniest of a grin hiding under his mountainous beard.

She backed away to examine his stance. Borse was the worst to practice with. His face held no emotion. His eyes never gave a hint where his strikes might land. The grin he’d shown her was only to provoke and only for the briefest of moments. His face quickly returned to the neutral calm of black space, distant, barren, a void that showed nothing.

With a quick click of her heels, Sylvia unclipped her right, forward leading mag-boot, double tapped the rear with a twist gyrating her body in two different directions as she launched herself in an arch over Borse. He countered by collapsing to his left, bending back at the knees to avoid her attack. Sylvia had counted on this. Knowing he was right-handed, and knowing that he would know she knew this, she had cantilevered her spin as she launched into the air. It was a blind move, most likely exposing her to his blade once more. But if calculated correctly, it would place her above and facing down as she glided past, gently sliding her blade across his exposed neck.

“Damn it. I hate when you counter my feint before I know what counter I am feinting from!” Borse bellowed, just dangling from his mag-boots, playing the floating corpse.

Sylvia spun and landed on the far wall, sticking her landing with a click of her boots. They stood there at odd angles, sweat pooling on faces, droplets floating off into the air.

“Not my fault you’re so predictable.”

Borse placed his hands behind his head, body floating.

“You’re a chess player, Captain. Always thinking ten or twelve moves ahead,” he responded.

“No. I’m a practicing Captain of a pirate vessel. I can’t afford not to think of every move.”

“Touché. Feeling lucky? Another go?”

“I’m no chess player or randy lover. More of a gambler, Borse. I know when to leave the table.”

“If that’s all you’ve got, than ta- ta,” he said, a grin bursting from underneath his bushy face covering.

Sylvia pulled off her sweaty top and threw it at Borse. He easily dodged the wet projective.

With earnest eyes he said, “Don’t let your mind wonder again, Sylvia. Dying because your unfocused is a stupid death. Nor one you deserve.”

“Never,” she replied.

Borse was the closest thing to a friend she had ever had. They were never lovers. Even now, with her ample breasts free floating, he looked her in the eye. He would always have her back.

Sylvia re-oriented herself to the rooms hatch and strode out. It was not uncommon for her to walk topless through her ship after a workout. All the men did, showing off muscles, tats and piercings. Most crew, if attracted, averted looking. She was their Captain, their leader and not one to be trifled with. It took a brave man to be Sylvia’s lover. Few wanted to go down the path of Olaf.