Poor Man's Fight (14 page)

Darren was more than a little overawed. He picked up a few different things, che
cking out their weight and feel. “What should I look for?” he asked.

“Mainly what you want right now is something big, scary and solid that could blow a giant hole in a car,” Chang told him.

Darren seemed surprised by that. “Really? I mean, it sounds good, but shouldn’t I start out with something more controlled?”

Chang shook his head. “You’re not looking for precision. You’re looking to scare the piss out of folks who don’t shoot people for a living.
Accuracy counts, but intimidation is more important for us. I’d be happy if the whole crew practiced more often, but we’re not going up against a fleet marine force anytime soon.

“
You’ll want to buy a second weapon eventually,” Chang continued. “You want something accurate and steady for groundside raids. Something with a full optical suite… these might be good,” he said, gesturing to the rifles. “You need a good assault weapon that’ll do some of the work for you. You can put that off for the moment, but definitely buy something on those lines before you sign on for a cruise. And don’t skimp on corrective gear; sometimes the locals put up a fight and sometimes they know what they’re doing. You need the edge of having a smarter gun than they’ve got. But right now, all you need is a big, obviously powerful sidearm.”

Darren considered the advice as his eyes continued to roam. He spotted three mannequins
in a corner, each wearing slick, imposing combat jackets. “What about body armor?” he asked.

“Oh, forget that shit,” Chang snorted.

“It’s a good idea!” called out Tenzing. “State of the art stuff there!”

“It’ll blow most of the cash you’ve got on you now,” Chang countered. “That stuff will protect you from a lot of trouble, but not everything. Hardly any of us wears it. Focus on the guns.”

“This would be good,” Jerry suggested. He hefted a black monster of a gun, not quite a rifle but too big to call a pistol. The barrel, hidden under a blocky dorsal housing, was a good five centimeters in diameter.

Darren’s eyes went wide. “Is that a plasma gun? How’s that good for self-defense? I mean, if I get jumped, that’s going to be kind of slow to draw, isn’t it?”

After a moment’s quizzical looks between the two older pirates, Chang groaned in realization. “Oh, no no,” he said with a bit of a laugh. “Don’t worry about self defense. I mean, sure, that’s good to think about, too, but nobody here is likely to fuck with you. They don’t want that kind of heat. Ain’t that right, Tenzing?”

“Don’t fuck with a pirate in Pirate Town,” Tenzing sang out from his lawn chair.

“That sounds a little too good to be true,” Darren frowned.

“No, seriously. That’s how it is here. The other pirate crews are generally pretty friendly. Sure, you’ve got to look out for the belligerent drunks, and they’re out there.
Don’t be dumb and don’t be shy about asking for help on the holocom if you get into trouble, but by and large you don’t need to sweat it. Any brawls between more than two guys just aren’t okay, and everyone pitches in to break up a fight that goes too far. Real disputes get settled in a ring.”

“We’ve got all the same sympathies,” Jerry concurred. “Sometimes pirates jump from ship to ship while in port. Whoever’s going out puts out a call and if a brother’s looking for fresh loot, it’s not like he has to give his employer twenty days’ notice. More than a few other ships come through here. Some of those tramp ships and yachts you saw in orbit are pirate ships, too.”

Chang nodded. “Talk to Lauren sometime. She’s cruised with half a dozen different ships. If anyone can teach you all about the life, it’s her.”

After considering it, Darren took the plasma carbine from Jer
ry, felt its weight in his hand and pointed it in a couple of directions to test the balance.

Tenzing joined them without interrupting. The gun dealer smiled confidently as he watched the new pirate check out the weapon. “So normally I’d let you shoot up some boxes outside to test that out,” he began, “but my magic sense of commerce tells me I might be able to make a sale with a little more effort. Bring that around back to the shooting range,” he said, gesturing for the others to follow. He snapped his fingers to one of the armed attendants in the back of the container, who grabbed a small metal tube out of a box before catching up.

The merchant showed them around to a spot underneath his ship. There were discarded crates and packaging materials scattered around in the freighter’s shadow. Beyond them lay the remains of several other crates, peppered with holes and some partially slagged from various demonstrations.

“I got
hold of a couple of these things that fell out of the back of a freighter on Korbin III,” Tenzing explained as he brought them to a collection of standing crates. “I was hoping to sell them for a good price, but then we tried to do the maintenance and the security programs kicked in. Slagged all the circuitry inside, so now they’re just hunks of metal. But they’re good for a demonstration.” He opened one crate, and inside stood a full set of NorthStar security powered armor.

Chang whistled. “That’s a hell of a find. Can’t do anything with it now?”

“Nah,” Tenzing said. “It’d still stop civilian-legal firearms and most regular infantry stuff. But it’s heavy as shit, and even in zero-g, it wouldn’t move right. The joints are all slagged. Proprietary security systems are pretty hot these days. Now it’s only good for target practice.” He looked to Darren with a twinkle in his eye. “So I can let you fire off a couple blasts from that thing at the grass or the rocks for free, or you can kick in a hundred creds and see what that gun will do against the real thing.”

“A hundred credits
?” Darren blurted.

“I got it,” Jerry offered. The older pirate’s sudden generosity surprised Darren.

“Phuong, stand this thing up out there,” Tenzing directed. The attendant handed Tenzing the tube he’d brought along and then pulled the armored suit out on a simple hand truck. As he wheeled it out into the field beyond, Tenzing loaded the tube into the plasma carbine, showing Darren how simple it was to operate. “Never fired a gun before?” he asked Darren.

“Never,” Darren answered, trying not to grin like a little boy.

“Well, then let’s start you off right,” he grinned with infectious enthusiasm. “Use both hands like so. Flip off the safety here, and let’s use the target acquisition suite. All you gotta do is point toward the target and make a quick pull of the trigger. Second pull shoots. Long as your aim is fairly close, she’ll help correct on her own. If you can hit the broad side of a barn, you can hit a man with this. She’s got a bit of a kick, so be ready.”

Tenzing put the gun in Darren’s hand. His assistant propped up the armor twenty meters out, then cleared away quickly with his hand truck. When Tenzing clicked the charger button, Darren heard the gun whine quietly. It almost hummed in his hand. He looked across the field, aimed, and confirmed the target as instructed. After another moment’s pause, he took a breath and then fired.

A glowing neon green ball of plasma erupted from the gun with a shudder, expanding several more centimeters after it left the barrel. It was slower than a bullet, but far more grandiose. When the ball of plasma hit its target, the suit practically exploded and fell backward in a heap.

Laughter burst from the observers. Tenzing took the gun back from Darren to power it down again before they walked out to survey the damage. They found the armor laying in a heap, its chest plate completely gone and several holes burned through the back plating. The intense heat of the blast had severed numerous limb joints.

Tenzing said something about the gun only being good to about such a range, with the power and effectiveness of its blasts dying off rapidly past thirty meters. Darren didn’t really hear it. From the moment he joined the crew of
Vengeance
, he felt like he was free for the first time in his twenty-five years of life. Now Darren felt powerful.

“How much?” was all he asked.

Chang and Jerry talked Tenzing down to sixteen thousand, plus another two grand for ammunition. Had they not spoken up, Darren would gladly have paid the full twenty.

***

Darren spent the rest of the afternoon tooling around the Bazaar on his own, a bottle in hand the entire time. The cute and willing women for hire along the lanes continued to tempt him, but he was still a bit wary of Paradise’s alleged hospitality. Darren appreciated the flirtation and teasing, but for the most part, he was happy to just shop.

Each individual article of the new outfit he bought would have eaten up most of his former monthly pay. He bought spare clothes that he put in a small duffel bag slung over his back. His new boots were stylish, thermal-insulated works of hand craftsmanship with internally-controlled gel pads that massaged his feet. They cost over a thousand credits. Something about forking over a full grand just for boots thrilled him.

He walked a few dozen paces out from the edge of the Bazaar, hurled away the bag holding his old crewman’s jumpsuit and boots, and blew it to hell with his brand new plasma carbine just because he could.

In the open cargo bay of a grounded shuttle, he got fitted for photoreactive contact lenses. He bought the latest and greatest earring-mounted personal holocomputer off the back of a hover truck.
His pockets soon bulged with new toys.

On occasion, he considered that he might be spending too much too fast. Yet there was still more to come. He still had his half-share coming from the hostages and the ship itself. That could realistically go as high as a half million.

With that in mind, as the sun set, he headed away from the Bazaar toward the permanent structures of Paradise City just a short walk away. Few of the buildings were higher than three or four stories at the most. The roads were paved primitively and sometimes with plant life breaking through, but for the short stretch of a couple of kilometers in each direction he found all the amenities of civilization… except, of course, for serious law enforcement.

It wasn’t hard to spot either of the high-class places recommended to him by his new shipmates. The Palace and the Harem stood within eyesight of one another. Unlike several other “hotels,” neither building had any of its workers lounging around outside beckoning to passersby.

More or less at random, Darren picked the Palace. He strode up the steps to the hotel’s main entrance, looking on appreciatively at how clean and well maintained the building was in comparison to its surroundings. Though the lovely young hostess in the tiny black dress politely asked for his name and ship as he entered, neither she nor anyone else objected to his gun or demanded to see his credit balance. She merely offered a drink, a place to check his duffel bag, and a bath.

“A bath?” Darren asked, curious.

The pert blonde’s lips twitched in a bit of controlled amusement. “Forgive me if this is a bit forward, but are you one of the new crewmen of the
Vengeance
?”

“Yeah,” he answered, and his chest puffed out a bit.

She nodded, checked a holo screen to her left, and then looked back to him. “Would you like me to show you?” she asked with a friendly smile. The hostess took Darren’s arm, waved for someone else to take over in the lobby, and brought him down a nearby flight of stairs. She led him through a hallway to a nondescript door, where she activated a chime. A moment later, the door opened.

Inside lay a spacious room dominated by a sunken square “bathtub” three meters across. There were towels, soaps and a spread of finger foods and drinks, but Darren didn’t notice them. His attention fixated on the pair of strikingly beautiful women lounging beside the tub. They seemed coolly pleased to see Darren… who
at first could only stare in awe.

The hostess leaned in to whisper helpfully, “This bath is seven thousand an hour. If you need some time to consider…?”

“No,” Darren murmured, “this‘ll do fine.”

Fourteen thousand credits later, Darren wandered up to the Palace’s main lounge feeling fantastic. He looked over the many restaurant tables and the bar, wondering where to sit. After a moment, he spotted the captain, seated at a table and having a drink with Ms. Ramirez—no, not Miss anymore. Vanessa Ramirez,
Aphrodite
’s former junior astrogator.

He’d never really talked to Ramirez, and was genuinely shocked that any of the ship’s officers would sign on with pirates. But he stopped reflecting on that when he noticed the displeased expression on
Casey’s face as Ramirez downed the last of her drink and stood. He didn’t say anything, nor did he snarl, but he surely seemed put out.

Ramirez left with
Casey looking on. She passed Darren with only a polite nod. The new recruit considered following her, but then Casey stood and called to him. The cloud over the captain’s spirit seemed to pass.

Obediently, Darren headed over.  “Evening,
Casey,” he said. It still felt odd to address a captain with such familiarity.

“Darren, how the hell are you? Let me buy you dinner. You look good,”
Casey observed. “And I recognize the scent. They got you downstairs already, eh?”