In a bolted down dresser, I found a pair of beige slacks and a white blouse with wide cuffs. It wasn't my usual style, but it was decent enough to wear. Slipping them on, I pawed through the drawers for gloves or something I could wear over my hands but I found nothing. With a heavy sigh, I slammed the last drawer closed and looked around for some kind of footwear. There was a single pair of dark brown knee-high boots beneath the bed that were a size too large for my feet but with a shrug, I slipped them on and pulled the straps tight through the clasps on the sides to make up for the size difference. When I was done, I found a black ribbon and used it to tie my red hair away from my face. I didn't know where I was, but I was going to make sure I was prepared to make a run for it and it definitely would have been difficult to accomplish that while in the buff. Sparing a glance in a mirror, I couldn't help but notice the dark bags under my hazel eyes. I looked sick, or grief riddled, which I was but it didn't really help to see it reflected back in the mirror.
The door across from the bed was heavy and metal, but it opened with ease, allowing me to step into a metallic corridor. Strangely, this looked familiar, but I couldn't exactly explain why just yet. Closing the door behind me, I turned my head to look down both ends of the corridor but was unable to see anything of interest as both ends curved toward other corridors. This room seemed to be the only one in this particular area as well so I picked a side and followed it around. Now I could see some doors, one to my left, closed tightly, and another a little further down on the same wall, also closed tightly. The corridor ended in a narrow flight of steps heading up so I followed it, the whole time overcome with a sense of deja vu that I couldn't shake. At the top of the steps, the wall to my immediate right opened up to a very spacious area that looked more than just familiar. I knew exactly where I was having been here once before, but before I could collect my wits, there was a gun in my face and a pair of angry blue eyes and blonde hair behind it.
"Stay where you are."
Holding up my hands, I fought the urge to laugh because this was going from bad to surreal really quickly.
"Put down your gun, Sadie," another voice said.
I didn't want to look, but I knew who's voice that was and maybe I wasn't all together in the head at the moment, but I was still able to grasp my situation enough to not want to look at the speaker because it would only confirm things I was not willing to accept. Still, I listened to boots move toward me, and as I placed my hands down, I looked up into familiar chocolate brown eyes.
"What is this, Lea?" I asked.
She seemed honestly sorry as she looked away for a moment before meeting my eyes again with a small fire behind them. "You have to understand," she started, "that things have gotten tough for me lately. I realized you coming back into my life was a blessing in disguise, and when you told me about the treasure, it just seemed to confirm it."
"I thought you were a successful mercenary? What happened to all your connections?"
Leanna looked uncomfortable as she spoke. "That chick I left you for didn't take so kindly to our break-up a year later. She used her father's power and connections to fuck up all my connections, cutting me off from them like a junkie from their fix. I got a bit desperate and turned to the only other thing I knew I could do."
Glancing around the room, I eyed the faces watching us - looked at the guns in their hands - before meeting Leanna's gaze again. "You turned to pirating," I said with disgust. "The most vile occupation anyone can be in. Granted, mercenary work wasn't much better but at least sometimes you got hired to do good things for others."
"Don't try to make it sound like it's worst than your hobby building!" Leanna shouted, anger spreading through her quickly. "That shit isn't even an occupation! It's a miracle people are stupid enough to buy your old bullshit."
"At least it's an honest job. I don't steal from people, only give them things I created with my own two hands."
"And if it wasn't for those tattoos on your hands, you wouldn't be able to do that," Leanna spat.
That was a low blow. Lower than leaving me for another woman or shooting my best friend dead in front of my eyes. I clenched my jaw as I struggled to keep control of my emotions. It hadn't been my decision to get the identical golden striped tattoos on the back of my hands. When I was younger, ten and eager to prove I could build things like my brothers and father did, I crushed my hands in an accident at the junkyard. I had been trying to pull a piece of metal sheeting out from under a pile of spare car parts, thinking I could pull it hard and fast enough to avoid the stuff on top of it from falling on me. It turned out that I couldn't, and the result was a car door coming down on my hands, smashing them badly. I don't know how it didn't crush both my arms as well and even the doctors had been surprised by the fact that my injuries were only below my wrists, but it didn't change the fact of how severe my injuries were. The doctors were geared up to amputate my hands but in a painkiller-induced fog, I begged them to save my hands, anyway they could.
And they did, to the surprise of all, including the doctors themselves, but it was not a flawless victory. Even after the bones healed, the tendons and nerves in my hands had been so severely damaged that my fingers twitched involuntarily all the time. My hands shook as well, unable to control their own impulses. I could still feel things with them, but it was nearly impossible to hold or grab anything, having to suffer the humiliation of my brothers spoon feeding me food and my mother wiping my bottom whenever I went to the bathroom. The doctors made the only suggestion they could: get a tattoo. The nanos in certain designs would heal my hands enough to enable me to use them again, but nothing was guaranteed. While I had admired tattoos on other people, I knew I never wanted one because they seemed wrong to me somehow. Plus, I was happy with myself. But the pain and humiliation was so much that my parents one day put me in our family hovercar and brought me to a tattoo shop. They had already chosen a tattoo for me and while I cried not to let them do this, my father gently held me in his lap and held out my hand as still as possible so they could etch three gold stripes on the back of one hand and then the other.
The Golden Bars, as they were properly called, governed the impulses in my hands. They suppressed the urge to twitch to the point where my hands did nothing but remain perfectly still for a week while the nanos reconfigured the impulses and such in my hands until I was able to move them like normal again. Although, now my hands never flinched or twitched or involuntarily spazzed out on me in any way. If I didn't move them, they made me think of doll hands. I was angry at my parents for a while after that, but in time I learned to appreciate what they had done for me, though I couldn't stand the sight of my tattoos - of my disability - so I took to wearing gloves all the time to hide them. Leanna knew what an impact her words would make on me, and while I knew she was angry, she had crossed dangerous territory. To stoop that low to hurt me was unforgivable, and she knew it as her eyes squeezed shut just before my fist collided with her eye, At least twenty guns came to point at me as I brought my fist back, ready to hit her again.
"Stand down, men," Leanna shouted, wheeling around with her hand pressed to her eye.
Her crew paused, some clearly itching to pull their trigger, but eventually they all lowered their guns.
"You disgust me, Lea!" I cried out, furious now. "And you killed my best friend!"
She glowered at me through her one good eye as two of her crew tended to her hurt eye. "That miscreant didn't deserve the honor of your time, especially not after she killed your father."
"She didn't kill him. It was an accident, and either way, at least she apologized for what happened, unlike some people. At least she was there to hold me after you ran off with that bitch. I'm glad she fucked over your life, by the way. You deserved it."
"I'm only sorry I didn't kill Jett sooner," Leanna hissed.
Thankfully for her good eye, two of her crew members held me back from hitting her again. I screamed in frustration and because I really felt defeated in that moment. Here was someone I had trusted, spitting in my face and taking away everything I had worked hard to get. I felt so foolish in that moment as I remembered the look on Jett's face the day I told her I was going to bring Leanna into this. She had been right, never trust a mercenary, especially a former one.
"Take her back to my quarters," Leanna ordered. "Maybe if she can learn to behave, I'll give her a coin or two of the treasure as a thank you for finding it for us."
There was some laughter in the room, but not much as I was dragged back down the stairs I had come up and back down the corridors to the room I had woken up in. I lashed out at one of the crew members as they tried to put me back in the room, the same one that first put her gun in my face, and clipped her in the jaw with my hand. Blue eyes burned brightly as she brought the butt of her gun up and clocked me first in the cheek and then in the stomach with it. Going down to my knees, she stooped before me and held my chin in-between her fingers so I could look her in the eye.
"I'm only going to tell you this once, firecrotch, and that's only a formality because you're the Captain's prize, though I don't know what she sees in you, especially after that shit you just pulled, but you better listen to me now. If you ever dare to put your hands on me again, I will put a bullet right between those pretty eyes of yours. Do you get me?"
I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything that would help me out of this situation alive. She let me go and wiped her fingers on her pants as she stood up and nodded to her buddy. A boot caught me in the forehead, sending me flying backwards onto my ass. The two broke out into laughter and finally left the room, slamming the door shut behind them. My head spun wildly as the surprise gave way to frustration and then sadness. I laid back and stared at the ceiling, trying to ignore the throbbing headache I had developed. Where did I go from here? It seemed I was my ex's prisoner now, no chance of escaping from a crew of twenty or so people. I only wished Jett was there to help me, and that thought made me sit up straight, slowly, as moving made me dizzy.
If Jett were in this situation, I began to think, then she would fight. Bloody, bruised, and the odds against her, I could easily see her getting to her feet and fighting until she couldn't fight anymore. In her memory, I would find the strength and fight too. Staggering to my feet, my head still spinning, I looked around the room for some kind of a weapon but the room was sparsely decorated and aside from some trinkets here and there, nothing really screamed weapon to me. Fine, I would just have to use my brain.
"Yo, firecrotch," Sadie said, entering the Captain's quarters.
The blonde was followed by the same crew member as earlier - a sullen looking woman that had at least ten years on the blonde. In her hands she carried a tray with food, nothing special, just gruel with the nutrients the prisoner would need not to die in it.
"Where is she?" asked the sullen looking woman, setting the tray down on the lone table in the room.
"Dunno. Firecrotch, why are you hiding?"
Getting down on her knees, Sadie peered under the bed, pointing her gun into the darkness. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust enough to see that there wasn't anything of interest beneath the bed. Standing, Sadie sighed and went over to the closet.
"I'm really not in the mood for games right now," she said. "That's enough of acting like a little brat, firecrotch."
Swinging the door open, she frowned when all she found was clothing hanging. It was a small closet on top of that, barely enough room for the clothes, much less an adult woman. After searching, Sadie growled loudly and cocked her gun.
"Where did that bitch go?"
"Out."
From the doorway, Azura smiled at them as she slammed the door shut and jammed it so Sadie and the sullen looking woman couldn't get out. She smirked as they swore loudly and banged against the metal door. Rubbing her wrists and stretching her back, Azura groaned as the muscles in her body ached from holding on so long to the back of the door. The idea had been simple enough but the actual strain had been torturous. Still, at least she was out now.
"Time to fight," she whispered and turned toward the opposite corridor from the last time.
I had never really explored Leanna's spaceship before. She had acquired it near the end of our relationship and she took me aboard it once, the day after she got it. The Blue Sky was a special type of spacecraft, the kind only merchants, mercenaries, and yes, space pirates, used. They tended to be larger than space shuttles as the people that used them often lived most of their lives on them, and because of their size, they needed a reasonable size crew that also lived aboard. Mainly, the crew consisted of mechanics and hired help, rarely were there any family members unless it was a merchant ship. At the time, when I first had saw her, the Blue Sky was a fix-it up type of project, but now, clearly, she was in fine running condition, with a crew big enough to help run her and give me plenty of trouble as I attempted to escape.
Since I hadn't explored much of the place, I wasn't familiar with it all that well, still, I only needed to find a weapon and a way off. The weapon should be easy on a ship full of pirates, but escaping was a problem I was doing my damnedest not to think about too much right now. Surviving came first, of course. The corridor, opposite of the one I had followed earlier, was pretty much the same as the other, only now there were two doors to my right. What was new was that there was a staircase that headed up, presumably back to the spacious room I had been in earlier, and stairs that went down. It wasn't too hard to figure which route I took. Descending, I only allowed myself a moment to marvel at the lights decorating both the walls of the new corridor and the ceiling. Nano technology at it's finest, I mused. This corridor was straightforward, turning to the right after a few feet and opening into a room I was certain was the engine room. There were no motors here though, only large computer monitors hooked together and to the control panels in the ceiling and walls by wires. It looked like some kind of science fiction experiment gone wrong.
Knowing enough not to touch anything lest I sent the spaceship on a collision course with the sun or something, I moved carefully by the monitors. This was actually one of the few places I remembered visiting on the ship the last time, only there had been old hardware and motors in here back then. At the other end of the room, I found what I was looking for, a door that led to the cargo bay area. It seemed to be sectioned off now - a place to store food goods, equipment for various things, and even a vehicle or three for traveling about once one were back on Earth. No weapons though, which I hadn't really expected to find, but I did find a nano-infused knife, likely used by one of the crew members to cut heavy cables or ropes. I would have preferred a blowtorch or a hammer, but I wasn't about to complain. Especially not when I picked it up in my bare hands and the knife began to glow, reacting to the nanos in my hands. My knowledge of weapons was admittedly limited, but this may have been the first time in twenty years that I was actually happy to have tattoos.
Looking for the other door that led back into the ship, my eyes fell upon a five-by-five black, metal box. "My treasure chest," I breathed in a low voice. In that moment, I relived the feeling of finding Isis almost a year ago, my fingers reaching out to touch my treasure. This was mine, by rights, not by theft, and I knew I couldn't escape without it. But since there was no way I could plausibly do that short of taking over the ship and beating over twenty armed people with just one knife, I decided I would make sure Leanna couldn't have it either.
It was a while before I could locate the weapons bay. It was small, but well equipped to take over other spaceships, or a small town. I kept the knife because it had proven to be a useful prying device, but I also took the one weapon I actually knew how to use - a phaser gun. The same kind that Leanna had used to kill Jett with. It was her signature weapon, even over newer types of guns and other weapons. She told me once it was the only gun her father had taught her to use before he went off on a journey and never returned, and it was the only gun she ever taught me how to use. I knew I didn't have the capacity to kill someone, but I was willing to defend myself and if that meant putting a hole in someone's foot so I could get by, then so be it.
After taking some items back to the cargo bay, I knew I had to face Leanna. I couldn't escape anyway, the escape pods were heavily guarded by crew members with twitchy trigger fingers, but maybe if I reasoned with her for a while, I could get by. If not, then I'd use a distraction to do so, if the option was possible. Going back through the engine room, I carefully hoofed it back up the stairs, not stopping until I was stepping out into the spacious room from earlier. It wasn't empty, of course not, but at least the entire crew wasn't in here like the last time. Instead, Leanna sat with her legs propped up on the end of a couch as three crew members hovered around her. She sat up when she saw me, smiling even though I had my stolen gun pointed at her.
"Got tired of playing Hide-and-Seek?"
"A bit. Thought we could play a game of Tag instead," I replied coolly.
"No, we already played that. See?" she asked pointing at her eye.
She wore a black eyepatch over the eye I had punched, drawing a smile across my lips.
"Well at least now you look like a legit pirate now."
"You know, I get that we use to fuck, a lot too and very well, but you're really pushing it with insulting me so freely in front of my crew," Leanna said in dark tone. "You're going to make them think that it's okay to disrespect me and that will cause insubordination and mutiny. Then, I will be forced to remind them who's in charge around here."
Without warning, she quickly drew a gun from inside her coat and shot the nearest crew member in the leg - her eyes never left my face once the whole time. The two remaining crew members shouldered their guns and picked up the now crying man and moved past me through a door. I did my best not to let my eyes linger on the small pool of blood or trail of it left behind. Self-assured, Leanna leaned back, now pointing the gun at me. This wasn't really going according to plan so far.
"Why are you keeping me here?" I finally asked, the question only just occuring to me.
"I'll admit, the smartest thing was probably to leave you abandoned in that hole beside that miscreant, but I couldn't. There's just something about you that makes it hard for me to consider hurting you."
"That didn't stop you from doing it to me three years ago."
Sighing, Leanna nodded. "Okay, I'll admit, that was wrong of me. I am sorry about that. I wasn't thinking right back then and it took me to find myself alone with nothing to realize how much I loved you."
I wanted to cock the gun right then but I didn't trust her finger on the trigger of her gun. "You're incredible. So you have been trying to get back into my pants this past month."
"I really meant it when I said you haven't aged in all this time. You're still beautiful and I have been looking forward to a run in the sack with you. Pretty sure if that miscreant hadn't been in the way, I would have bagged you a long time ago."
"Stop calling her a miscreant! Her name was Jett!" I shouted suddenly, seething.
"Look, I was hoping that if I brought you along with me that in time you would take me back. That's all I want," Leanna said, ignoring my outburst. "A second chance."
Now I really cocked my gun because I couldn't bear to hear another word from Leanna's mouth. If she was going to kill me, then so be it, but I wasn't going out alone. Only, as my finger began to squeeze on the trigger, someone hit me in the head from behind, forcing me to go down, the gun sliding across the floor. Wincing, and pissed to have been once again hit in the head, I looked up to see the culprit. Sadie was smiling down at me, her gun aimed square at my forehead. Her smile dripped menace as she cocked her gun.
"Got any last words for the Captain?" she asked.
Shooting Leanna a dark scowl, the dark skinned woman looking regretful yet completely nonplussed, I looked back up at Sadie. "Yeah, fuck you. Both of you."
For the second time in a very short amount of time, I closed my eyes to wait for a bullet to hit me, this one definitely having my name written on it. And for a second time, I heard a blast, but nothing hit me. How was that possible anymore at this point?
"I have some last words for the Captain," someone said, making my eyes fly open. "If you move bitch, I won't hesitate to kill you on the spot. You either, Goldilocks."
Turning, I found Sadie holding onto her shoulder, blood seeping from a bullet wound. She held onto her gun but it was clear she couldn't pick up her arm to take aim. I could also see Leanna's face had gone pale despite her dark complexion and tears filled my eyes as I finally spied my savior -- Jett. She was standing against a wall with two guns in her hands, one aimed at Sadie and the other at Leanna. I wanted to rush to my feet and kiss her so hard that our lips would be bloody and bruised, but because of the new blow to the head, it took all I had in me to get up to my feet, woozier than I had been after the kick to my forehead. Swaying, I recovered my gun and pointed it at Leanna, though my arm couldn't take proper aim at her. I couldn't turn my eyes away from Jett anyway because fuck me, she was alive! Really alive!
"How?" That was all I could choke out past my tearful joy and wooziness.
Smirking, Jett kept a glare on Sadie but put her gun down long enough to pull down the collar of her long sleeved shirt. There, dead center of her chest, was a pale green tattoo. The Wilted Star looked just like that, a star wilting apart. I remember seeing it in a tattoo book Jett had showed me once but I couldn't remember it's function.
"Remember when I said I didn't get that new tattoo? I lied. Figured this bitch could hear us talking about it with that Hearing Stripe tat beside her ear, so I lied so she wouldn't know. This baby lets me take a shot to the chest area, front, side, or back, and survive. Thought it might come in handy if she turned on us."
"But there was all that blood," I frowned. "And you came at me with a shovel!"
"Well, I can take a shot and survive, didn't say I couldn't get hurt. Got a pretty ugly burn over my heart but that's nothing that can't be fixed. And seriously, you think I would come at you with a shovel? I grabbed onto as I was falling, you didn't see the whole thing."
"I may have underestimated you after all," Leanna finally said, finding her tongue. "Now how do you propose to get out of here alive?"
"Same way I got this far - dumb luck and a promise to Azura's father before he died."
"My father?"
Jett looked sad as she nodded. "He made me promise to protect you from harm. That was his final wish and I'm a woman that honors things like that. It was why I came to you after Leanna left and why I've stayed by your side ever since. It's why I got my tattoos, not for me, but for you. To protect you, Az."
"And the rest?" I asked, even though I knew this wasn't the time to ask about things like that.
"It started off as a promise to protect you, but Azura, I really fell for you. Hard. The kind of hard that brings a 'dead' woman back from the grave just to tell the one she cares the most that she loves them. I love you, Az," Jett said.
Pain momentarily forgotten, I felt blood rush to my face as a warm feeling melted the pain away. This was.... Exactly what I had hoped would happen some day, minus the betrayal and all the blows to my head. Boots could be heard pounding against the metallic steps outside the room, snapping us out of our moment. Jett fired her guns, a bullet hitting Sadie in her other shoulder and one going through Leanna's forearm to prevent her from shooting at us as we left. Dropping one of the guns, Jett rushed forward and grabbed my hand.
"Let's get out of here!" she said, gun held high in front of her as she pulled me along. We burst through the door the injured man had been previously carried through. It opened into a white corridor, doors marking small rooms on our left and right as we dashed forward. Further along, there was a ladder off to the right which Jett pushed me down. It wasn't easy navigating down the ladder with a possible concussion but I scrambled down as quickly as I could as Jett stood guard overhead to keep any pursuers at bay. When she saw me almost at the bottom, she slipped the gun into her waistband and slid down the ladder, squeezing her feet onto the sides of it so she could literally slide down. I moved just as she reached the bottom, only taking a second to admire Jett in action, something I hadn't really seen before, only heard of. My head was woozy still, but less so now as I realized we were in the cargo bay. How did I miss the ladder earlier, I wondered. Possibly because it was hidden by a column from where I had been poking about before.
Looking around a second time, I realized Isis was parked in the cargo bay. That definitely hadn't been there earlier. Looking at Jett, she caught the surprised expression on my face and beamed at me.
"So a few months ago I started reading up on how to pilot a spacecraft. Thought I could surprise you, but it took me a little too long to get the gist of it, you know, without any actual experience. I had maybe another couple months of study ahead of me when you said you were going to bring Leanna into the mix to pilot Isis," she admitted, looking sheepish when she got to the end. "I didn't think you wanted to wait another few months so that's why I didn't say anything before."
"You idiot," I said, smiling. "I would've waited."
People were coming down the ladder but I still took the time to press into Jett and kiss her lips, finding the taste of them a breath of life as I took her hand.
"I'm sorry for being so blinded by my thirst for adventure that I ignored what was right in front of me," I said as we began to run toward Isis.
"Don't sweat it. It's part of your spontaneity, I'm use to it," Jett chuckled as we quickly climbed aboard Isis.
"What about the treasure?" I asked, looking at the metal box.
"Don't worry," Jett said, sliding into the pilot seat. "We don't need it."
Smiling, I slid into the passenger seat behind her and strapped in as the glass dome came down. Shots were being fired at us now, crew members filtering in from the ladder and the doors at either end of the cargo bay, but Isis was already gearing up and in a moment, we were out of there, crashing a hole through the cargo door and into space. I removed the remote I had been hiding in my pocket and leaned forward to show it to Jett.
"I did something bad," I said.
"What did you do? What's that remote for?"
Pressing the button, I smiled at the sound of a second explosion coming from the cargo bay. Jett raised her eyebrows in shock.
"You didn't!"
"If I couldn't have it, then Leanna sure as hell wasn't going to have it. Not after all the shit she put me through," I sighed.
"Damn, I knew there was a reason I fell so hard for you," Jett laughed. "By the way, I got a surprise for you. If you can, try to check behind you."
Confused, I looked over my shoulder and noticed a large green tarp that hadn't been there when we set off from the Underground Hangar, nor had it been in our supplies. With a little effort, I pulled up the corner closest to me and nearly screamed when I saw what was beneath. Money spilled out from under the tarp, gems and gold sparkled as I reached out to grab a handful of it.
"Holy hell, Jett! What is this?!"
"Sorry I didn't help you out sooner but I knew once I got you, we would probably be running for our lives so I made a little withdrawal from our metal box. Dunno how much I took but I think we're set for the rest of our lives."
Smiling now, I held up an emerald that made me think of Jett's green eyes. "I thought we didn't need it?"
"We didn't need what was left behind. There's more than enough here for us."
"For us, huh?" I giggled.
"Yep. You, me, and any little terrors we decide to have in the future. We will all be well taken care for the rest of our lives. You can keep building old machines and I can open up a new garage in honor of your father, and we can do it without worry of bills or anything."
Tears spilled from my eyes, a combination of joy and having just survived near-death situations several times too many in a small span of time. Maybe even part of my tears was because of my possible concussion. The tears came freely though as I threw my arms around the seat in front of me and Jett's shoulders.
"You're amazing, Jett. Thank you."
Touching my hand gently, I knew Jett was probably smiling when she said, "No need to thank me."
"I will though, for the rest of my life. I'll thank you for being so goddamn amazing to me. For being so incredible."
She squeezed my hand but remained silent.
"By the way, what's this about having kids some day?" I asked, smiling through my tears.
"Oh... It's just a thought," she said, embarrassed. "I always thought it would be nice to have some little monsters running around."
"We better get start fucking right away then," I laughed.
"Wait until we land, babe, because I have a feeling we won't be getting out of bed for a week after this debacle."
"Sounds good to me."