The Six-Eyed Beast
Copyright© 2025 by BenLepp
Chapter 22: The Pirates
February 13th, 2279
The pirates on the ship they had christened “Marsuppa” ‒ a large animal from the pirate captain’s homeworld that attacked wanderers by mimicking a bridge over small rivers before slamming shut like a huge flytrap ‒ were starting to get bored again. The tasty Fellian freighter that had promised to appear was running late, and Nuki thought they had simply reevaluated the risk and chosen to avoid the obvious snare. Heppi, their leader and husband of Nuki, however, had ordered them to remain vigilant, as he was not only hoping the helpful Fellians might still come around the sun but also that some other ship from the trade routes nearby might still show compassion and move in, so their second vessel was still hiding further out. Musderan, their engineer had been looking at their passive scanners for a while now, trying to figure out why their rock left a weird trail of dust, which was first falling back together normally behind them and then swirling again, a physical phenomenon he had not yet seen, thinking their engines might be out of whack, disturbing the dust with a gravitational trail. Of course, he had no idea that a massive fleet warship was following them some distance behind, trying to adjust their own dust disturbances at the same moment, which had led Musderan to think he was seeing some effect he would have learned about if he had stayed in school. Further down, in the cargo hold on the lowest deck, there were three other pirates, brothers by the name of Sullt, Sullit, and Mak. They were the muscle, heavily armed and always in space suits and they were in the middle of a game of Furious, a card game that regularly led to shootouts between people ‒ not only in the Fringe.
And it wasn’t a coincidence; it was actually the goal of the game. Most of the fleet’s strategists were laser-focused on the threat of the Oopid-Seki alliance or the growing power of the Manqs, but for the longest time, there had been another pair of eyes directed at the League of the Void, trying to slow their spread with various creative measures. They were the Nekolis, officially a loose coalition of the League’s neighbors in the Fringe, occupying the next section of the Milky Way’s outer perimeter and trying to make the most of their disjointed and isolated systems. They were no match for the economic power of the League, the Oopids, or the Manqs, but they were smartly using whatever they had, and much they had, as they were well-connected to the criminal underworld in the League. In the decades prior, the League’s rapid expansion towards them had unnerved them, so their goal was not confrontation, just delaying, making the Fringe harder to move through towards them. Not only were they giving pirates and scavengers shelter on their forward bases “open for any business”, they also simply recruited settlers from the League’s races to move into their territory as “agricultural advisors”, learning the latest from them and especially schooling their children, recruiting many of them to be sent back to join the Senatorial Fleet as sleeper agents, keeping them well-updated on technological advancements and diplomatic missions they could possibly foil. They were also manipulating the League’s markets, often crashing prices by sending large and cheap shipments to its systems, fouling local producers. But they were most revered for their creative measurements in destabilizing the League, once creating a viral ad campaign that made jewelry fashioned from rare strategic resources highly desirable in the Fleet, greatly diminishing the available stocks for military use and causing a wave of skin irritations. They also flooded the League with Gimmies, a small and genetically modified rodent with large eyes and soft paws, which instantly rose to the top of every child’s list of presents, but very nocturnal and demanding lots of activities, so they were usually just let out at night, gnawing at pipes and connections until the fleet banned them on any and all installations. Their hitherto undiscovered most genius strikes against the League’s sanity were an action-RPG with more than 100.000 hours of playing time, a conglomeration of the best games in the known universe which had a strong grip on the idle part of the League’s population, reducing their contributions to society dearly. But they had needed another game, one that could be played quickly by people who were actually busy on ships, so they invented Furious, a card game simply set up to provide endless ways of cheating. It gave any player the chance to help or harm other players in the game at any point by setting up a ruleset ‒ the “seed” ‒ that was easily manipulated, poorly understood due to its complexity and conflicting rules and deliberately vague instructions written by the Nekolis’ best linguists. It was a huge success, speaking directly to any player’s wish to outsmart their opponents ‒ even the console was built in a way that it gave many, many options on how to access the programming. Whoever could argue best, was good at Furious. Needless to say, the number of violent incidents on ships rose steeply after 30 million units were sent out to the League in a contest almost anyone won. Just a year before the Rubicon’s launch, however, the Nekolis had had a surprise coup on their most influential planet, the ruling elite ousted by an economic council desperate to raise the bottom line of their territory and eventually join the League, pretending like nothing had happened between them. The infighting had been violent, killing a large number of the Nekolis’ best operators, which meant that not only were there hundreds of sleeper agents now without masters, but also very distracting games nobody was profiting off anymore. The economic council even went so far as to try to call back or neutralize its agents to prevent the League from discovering them and tried monetizing their games, which were quickly pirated by everyone. Thus, as their efforts to destabilize the League were still spreading out into the galaxy, the ones that had set them in motion were already gone or imprisoned, leaving everyone in a strange situation.
At this point in the three pirate’s game of Furious, Mak was on a losing streak and accusing Sullit and Sullt of having rigged the console. Mak would have liked to threaten the other two, but had already lost his two weapons to one of them each, getting increasingly hostile, also due to his advanced consumption of the Tillin grog of which they had captured a sizeable supply, none of which was destined to arrive at the next station for sale. Now, he had questions.
- Show me the seed!
Sullit was in no mood to pause the game and have the slow and drunk Mak go through the whole ruleset of their Furious console, something they had had enough trouble agreeing on in the preceding weeks. They were on Leonis rules ‒ which were, of course, not invented in the Leonis system but by the Nekolis ‒ which meant that each drawn card came from the discarded pile of the players before ‒ and the more cards one could discard the easier it got to pass on cards to the next player, uniting in a silent alliance. Sullt and Sullit indeed had agreed to concentrate on different colors, passing other colors back into the discarded pile. The rule change Mak was now looking for concerned how many cards from the pile a player could see before choosing which to pick up ‒ which greatly helped in collecting the stronger cards. Sullit tried to get around this interruption.
- Blame the game again, huh, Mak?
- Shut up. Cards down, open the seed!
Sullt gave Mak a push.
- Every freaking time, man. You’re just too dumb for this game.
- Shut your snout you skitter or I’ll weld it shut for you!
Sullit was in no mood for another confrontation, trying to get up from the ammunition box he was sitting on.
- Screw this, Mak. You ruin every game you spiteful cloaka.
As the game platform suddenly went dark, deleting their game instantly ‒ another evil Nekoli trick meant no save games ‒ everyone made their move. Sullit thought Mak had kicked the cable again to get out of his last place, Mak thinking Sullit had gotten up for the exact same reason, trying to hide his changes to the seed. Sullt was rolling backwards off the broken generator he had made more comfortable with a few scraps of insulation, and all three of them were reaching for their weapons in the dark, Sullt and Sullit first grabbing the same weapon, which was fortunately still locked. They were all so concentrated on their dispute that they didn’t immediately realize the whole cargo space they lived in had gone dark, their suits switching on the weak positioning lights instantly.
One deck above, Heppi had just been sweettalking to Nuki, promising her to take some time off raiding to visit her parents a sector over, they themselves being retired pirates, which was rare, as most never made it that far. He had leaned over his wife, playfully pulling at the strings of her multi-layered corset, getting closer to his goals. As darkness enclouded him, his suit switched on the work lights, only for him to be blinded by Nuki pulling out a flashlight. Musderan behind them was already leaving the command deck up to their reactor. Heppi left his wife to fix her gown, ran to the center of the deck and stuck his head down the ladder hatch.
- SULLT? MAK? SULLIT?
At first, there was no answer from the darkened hole below, just dim lights dancing in the dark as the three brothers were trying to choke and beat each other, but their leader’s repeated yells soon made them stop and look up, entangled in a mess of legs, arms, suits, boxes, and weapons held the wrong way around. Sullt now saw Heppi’s lights illuminating the mass of limbs.
- YEA?
- FUCK IS GOING ON?
- WE OUT OF POWER?
- SEEMS SO.
- SO WHAT?
- GET YOUR GEAR AND UP HERE MAN.
There was a clunking noise felt through the darkened hull. The air in the former science platform was humid, as their environmental systems had been working for years without proper maintenance, so moss and fungi had started to grow in the corners, some of which now plopping down to the ground. Heppi went from being annoyed by another power coupling failure to paranoid immediately. If there was one sound pirates knew well, it was the sound of an airlock being forced open, only that they were usually the ones doing the forcing.
All three decks of the Marsuppa followed the same octagon shape of the outer hull, with just one main corridor per deck, connected by a ladder up and down and branching out into eight triangular rooms. Musderan was on the upper deck, the reactor was working, but the power supply had failed in some now sparking distributors he had stuck to the ceiling. He grunted and started to look for some boxes to get up to the ceiling, as he was rather short as a Tet’leng. He never realized the dim light coming from one of the other rooms wasn’t Heppi who often helped in maintenance but a marine’s helmet dimly lighting up a human face through the narrow viewport. Mender had no problems seeing the Tet’leng who had his back turned to her, but that race wasn’t on the list of the races that could easily and silently be knocked out by the injection pod stuck to her rifle. Which meant she had to open fire, which would alert the rest of the crew to the boarding party. She pointed Diop and Salim to cover the laddered hatch and stuck her rifle in the Tet’leng’s back.
- Don’t make a sound. You are under arrest.
The Tet’leng wasn’t impressed, as the only people in the Fringe mentioning arrests were the Senatorial Fleet, so he was just looking at being stunned in the worst case and might just fight his way out of it in the best case, scoring some fleet equipment. When he uttered his battle cry and started to duck and turn, however, Mender had already set her weapon to automatically fire if sudden muscle movements were detected, a setting the pirates hadn’t heard of, as it had been made available to policing forces just months earlier, after an extended series of trials. All of these factors now sent Musderan flying off his box, thoroughly out of action. At almost the exact same moment, Diop and Salim each bounced a flash down the hatch to the main deck, waiting for a second before dropping after it back to back, landing in the smoke that followed the blinding light. Unfortunately, Salim had made the mistake of looking down, his helmet trying to protect his eyes, but he arrived in total subjective darkness, as the weak signal from his helmet’s vision enhancer had no chance of registering on his fried eyes. Diop was more successful, now looking at Nuki, turning ‒ still dragging bands from her gown now dancing around her and raising a sidearm at him. Diop’s finger was quicker than her arm, neutralizing Nuki, but he was almost simultaneously shoved in the back by Salim falling into him, having been hit by Heppi. Several more shots arrived, both marines going down, Salim already blinded and now hit, Diop taking cover behind him.
The unpleasant shootout continued, whereby the thick torso plating on Salim’s armor took several hits, ultimately burnt through, leaving Salim with several critical wounds. Diop was keenly aware of this, first smelling burnt rubber from the armor and now burning flesh, so he got up, trying to move away from Salim and present another target to Heppi cowering in a doorway a few meters off, peppering his former command station from a short automatic beam rifle. As Diop disappeared in a random doorway of the octagon layout of the deck, Heppi stepped forward, trying to press his advantage against the fleeing Diop, only to be shot in the head by Mender when he passed sideways under the hole containing the ladder in-between the decks. Mender had launched herself head-first into the circular space, wedging her legs in the ladder in an acrobatic display of her fitness, wanting to support Diop and Salim, when Heppi simply walked into her line of fire. This, however, attracted the attention of Sullt, Sullit, and Mak, who had been cowering in the dark lower deck peaking up the ladder to find out what was going on ‒ which was clearly a firefight but knowing against whom was of vital importance to them, as all three of them had good reasons to hide on the Marsuppa, having stolen some bounty from their previous ship. All they had seen so far was a flash, some smoke, and then several shots travelling in opposite directions, streaking through the rapidly disappearing smoke. Now, all three of them could see clearly and opened fire at Mender who was unable to get out of the ladderway quickly and simply dropped a pressure grenade down the hole, forcing the three pirates to jump for cover and giving her time to drop onto the main deck, still head-first, almost falling further in-between Sullt, Sullit, and Mak.
Mender had been hit, though, and also partially landed on Salim, whose endosuit was beeping and blinking, trying to keep his blood pressure in the usable range. She rolled over to one side of the hole in the ground as Diop reappeared, aiming at it from the other side. The grenade had gone off with a loud bang ‒ which was the main point as any serious grenade would rip the thin outer hull of the station apart, killing anyone not in a suit and endangering Salim, whose suit was likely unable to hold pressure.
Everything from the first words Mender had spoken on the pirate vessel to this situation had taken less than 25 seconds, now, silence was filling the confined bowels of the ship like the smoke now making its way into the several connected rooms, dropping lower and lower. Mender decided to start negotiations.
- You down there?
- Who are you?
- Senatorial Fleet Marines. Surrender.
- Nah, you let us go or we blow this ship.
- We’re in full control of all systems, genius.
- We’re in the cargo hold, dumbass. That’s where we store our weapons and explosives!
- So, you’ll just blow yourself up for no reason?
- See, the three of us ... Can’t really go to prison. Got too many enemies everywhere. Better to make a splash here than to be murked in a cell, wouldn’t you say?
Mender found herself in a classic standoff. At least, the voice from below had made the mistake of telling her how many there were, matching the signals logged into the ship earlier, as found by the cyberwoman. She was trying to get a read on their position, but her helmet’s systems were too weak to allow a reading through the radiation-dampening material between the decks, an unintended side effect of the fleet’s prior attempts to keep their scientists safe above anomalies. She was also unable to read anything in the materials seen from above the hole that confirmed their ability to create an explosion, but then again it made sense that any explosive materials or devices would not be stored directly next to a ladder.
- Good. What do you want?
- I want you to fuck off the way you came and leave us be?
- Are you stupid?
There was a pause.
- You’re not really used to negotiating, huh, marine?
- And you’re a poor pirate. What do you think where we came from? We didn’t walk here. We have a warship hovering outside; you won’t go anywhere.
Now, there was a longer pause, Mender could hear faint voices hissing at each other until another voice spoke up to her.
- Looks like we’re up the creek here, huh?
Mender decided to forgo the obvious answer and simply turn comms with the Rubicon back on. They had gone in silently, avoiding their signals to the ship to be detected but now there was no reason to remain silent anymore. There had been a debate between Basil and Nocks as to the usefulness of this measure, Nocks arguing that as they had found no internal sensors, the marines should keep in touch with the ship and gain that advantage but Basil explained that in CO, they had always had portable sensors on their suits to pick up signs of whatever moved around them in such exercises. Both were wrong, however, as although the pirates didn’t equip their ship with internal sensors, Heppi had had such a sensor but simply no time or early warning to make use of it.
Mender sent the footage from her suit to the Rubicon and gave them a minute to catch up, the three pirates below breathing heavily. The break felt much longer to the involved ‒ Sullt, Sullit, and Mak aiming at the hole above them from behind cover and Diop and Mender aiming at the other side of the well-covered ladderway.
On the Rubicon’s bridge, a debate now raged, after Basil suggested an old trick. He simply wanted to scan the lower deck actively now, pinpoint the pirates exactly and then send accurate radiation bursts into their chests, making them squirm in pain, unable to react or fire at whatever they planned on using to negotiate their way out of their predicament. It would simply be a misuse of the ship’s powerful scanner arrays overcoming the radiation shielding of the former station and the reason they usually only used passive scanners under cloak, as the multitude of particles their scanners could try against an enemy hull was almost always easily detectable, even causing alarms on most ships. In theory, this was always possible, but in practice, most advanced ships were well-shielded, only the cobbled-together pirate vessel making this possible. Basil’s plan was met with much resistance from Korolev who feared blowing up the wide variety of explosive cargo she assumed the pirates had, and Doctor Boddins, who maintained they might accidentally kill the pirates, depending on their suits and race.
Mender felt she was running out of time, as surely, at least one of the pirates below her would be working on making their threat a reality. And she didn’t want to be close to an explosion strong enough to rip the deck plating through her. She considered using the last flash she had, but feared it might not stun all of them, again leading to their explosive threats. Negotiations were in order.
- You down there?
- What do you want?
- I’m ordered to pull out.
- Smart choice. Now fuck off.
- Problem is I got two wounded here, gonna take a moment to get them to the airlock.
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