Pirate Consort Read online

  Pirate Consort

  Carysa Locke

  Copyright © 2018 by Carysa Locke

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Contact Me

  Also by Carysa Locke

  Prologue

  18 years ago

  Plasma salvos breached the hull. Nitrogen and oxygen, life-giving and finite, vented into space. The ship’s reserves dropped to less than sixty percent in a matter of seconds. It wasn’t the worst damage Razor’s Deep had taken in battle, but it was close. Even for the latest nanograph - an update Braxton purchased during their last space dock - self-repair had limits. The nanites could only do so much to mend the inner bulkheads of the ship before the air supply dropped below survivable levels.

  The boy with no name sat hunched in his alcove, connected mentally to every aspect of the ship’s systems. Before the nanograph, he’d only been able to connect with the ship’s central computer. Now, it felt as though his mind touched every corner of the vessel. He knew the damage report without having to ask the ship.

  He ran a tally through his mind in milliseconds: forward weapons offline, drive core cracked, hull breach across two decks and three bulkheads. Aided by the ship’s computers, his human brain processed the calculations as fast as the most sophisticated AI. He hesitated for less than a second before shutting every blast door and vent to the aft section of the ship, isolating the breach across decks 3 and 4.

  It saved the ship. And condemned twenty-seven men and women to die.

  The nanograph wouldn’t finish repairing in time to save them, but the rest of the ship would remain stable with…twenty percent of the air reserves remaining. It would be enough for them to survive, if the mechanics could fix the jump drive. Provided the pirates let them, of course.

  The boy had heard many stories. In most of them, pirates didn’t leave behind survivors.

  “What the fuck are you doing, brat?” Braxton’s voice was a harsh and unwelcome intrusion, blaring through the ship’s comm system.

  The boy flinched, ducking his head away from the sound. It was a reflex, one he couldn’t help. The mercenary commander’s accent made fuck sound like feck. But the boy had no trouble understanding him. Braxton was one of those people who shouted everything, whether speaking the words with his mouth or thinking them with his mind.

  The boy struggled to move his lips, pulling back from the vastness of the ship to his own small body. It took several seconds to get his jaw to move in response to his wishes. Speaking out loud was difficult while he was connected so deeply with Razor’s Deep. Every square inch of her was built of nanograph now, filled with nanites making it both self-repairing and malleable to whatever the crew needed. The boy was connected to every line of code, every nanite, and of course to the ship’s central brain. He felt Razor’s Deep like she was his own skin and bone, injured now, but still vital. Still alive. All he had to do was think a command, and the ship responded. Instantly. Faster than any human could hope to.

  His own body felt impossibly sluggish by comparison. But when Braxton used that tone, it was best to answer as quickly as possible. So he made the difficult transition back to his own head and hoped he could answer fast enough.

  “We were losing too much air.” He forced his mouth to move, to form physical speech a null like Braxton could understand. Everything would have been easier if he’d been purchased by someone Talented, like him. But Braxton wasn’t Talented. He couldn’t connect his mind to ships or hear thoughts.

  That was lucky, though. If Braxton could hear the boy’s thoughts, he’d have spaced him a long time ago.

  “I don’t give a fuck. You just killed two dozen of my people!” The mercenary captain sounded angry. Fear clogged the boy’s throat. He was too valuable a slave for Braxton to space, most days. But his owner acted rashly when temper controlled him. Sometimes he deprived the boy of food. Sometimes he beat him. Once, he’d dragged the boy from his alcove and all the way to the airlock, stopping just short of spacing him.

  The boy considered his next words carefully. It was important not to disagree with Braxton. Even when that was what he was doing.

  “Thirty-eight people are still alive.” He made his voice as neutral as possible. “Forward weapons are offline. The first bombardment cracked the drive core. We have just enough air to make one space jump to the nearest waystation. If the drive can be repaired.”

  A dangerous silence answered him. The ship rocked as another salvo exploded, just missing the hull. A warning shot. The pirates knew they were badly damaged. Another hit could destroy the ship. They were just reminding Braxton of that, probably while they prepared a boarding party.

  He held his breath; losing this battle would surely have put Braxton in one of his foulest moods. He would be looking to vent some of that rage.

  On his worst days – in the darkest corners of his mind – the boy hoped it would happen. He looked outside at the stars and the cold black, and thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be out there. The vast emptiness held a certain appeal. Silence. Peace. No one to hurt him, no thoughts beating at his mind, no masters to be cruel or indifferent. No hunger pains.

  He looked down at his small body, the spindly legs and arms. He wore an old cast off shirt from one of the crew. It was so big it dwarfed him. Braxton had him on nutritional bars for rations. “No sense wasting good food on a slave.” He got one bar a day, and water to drink. If he did something extra spectacular, like help them win a major space battle, he got a plate from the regular mess as a special reward. He always ate the food slowly when that happened, savoring every bite. But that hadn’t happened in a long time. Right now his skin felt stretched over bone, with little else in between. What little fat reserves he’d had were long gone, vanished as his body tried to grow in height.

  The boy wasn’t sure how old he was, exactly, but he thought somewhere around twelve. It seemed as though those dozen years stretched back forever, and sometimes he wasn’t sure he wanted to live for twelve more.

  On those days, when his thoughts seemed lost in darkness and despair weighed him down, he liked to put all of his consciousness inside the ship. Leave his empty body huddled in the tiny alcove in the engine room, a chain around one wrist attached to one of the bulkheads. He would let himself feel the frigid hull like his own skin, immersed in the silence like his head was under water. Soundless. Sightless. It was the most peaceful thing he’d ever experienced in his young life.

  He imagined death was like that. He wanted to stay there forever, but no matter how hard he tried, his mind eventually fell back to his body, tugged by some invisible force he couldn’t see or control.

  “We’re about to be boarded.” Brax
ton’s voice still sounded pissed, but there was grudging acceptance to it as well. A kind of capitulation the boy had never heard before. “Those motherless pirates are taking the ship.”

  Even as he spoke, the words faded from the boy’s awareness. His thoughts were focusing back to Razor’s Deep as another vessel connected to the airlock. He felt the bump of the link expanding to fit the conduit, the grind as it sealed into place. The hatch was locked, but that didn’t stop them. Heat sliced the locking mechanism. The outer door opened and he could do nothing to stop it. Unfamiliar boots thumped onto the deck.

  Braxton and his people waited in the corridor for them.

  If they hadn’t suffered the hull breach, the boy could have urged Braxton to back off so he could seal away that part of the ship. He could have vented the air and suffocated the intruders. But he couldn’t sacrifice the air that remained.

  Still, he had a few tricks left.

  Pull back, he told Braxton as the pirates cut through the inner airlock door. He could hear the Captain’s thoughts, so loud they hurt.

  The mercenary didn’t like taking orders. Especially from a slave. Braxton hesitated, but then he pulled his people back to the nearest cross-corridor. It was almost too late. The pirates were already pouring into the hallway. Plasma weapons fired from both sides. Five of Braxton’s people went down, but the pirates took no damage. Something the boy could neither see nor feel shielded them, absorbing or deflecting the mercenaries’ weapons-fire. Intrigued, the boy focused his mind around that area for a heartbeat. But it told him nothing. They weren’t carrying plasma shields. He could sense nothing touching the walls of the ship.

  He didn’t have time to solve the mystery. Braxton and his men were outnumbered. The boy triggered the ship’s fire suppression system in the section of corridor around the pirates. The nanites responded, changing the shape of the nanograph walls to include openings and tiny nozzles. The foam sprayed all around the intruders, treating them like flames that needed to be smothered. It was sticky by nature, beginning in nearly liquid form, but quickly expanding to fill the available space.

  So the boy didn’t understand what was happening when the foam being sprayed onto the pirates built into a giant ball in front of them, instead of sticking to their arms and legs and filling the corridor. A second later, the growing ball shot down the corridor straight at Braxton.

  The boy winced as it happened. Impossible. But the boy felt it happen. The ball and expanded and tangled up what remained of Braxton and his fighting crew.

  “I’m going to kill you, you fucking—” Braxton’s words cut off abruptly when foam filled his mouth. He gagged and spit, fighting to free himself from the sticky mess, still firing useless plasma bursts at the pirates. Most of the shots were wild, skimming off the nanograph walls. The nanites were already working hard at repairing the burns and scorch marks. The boy directed them to change shape yet again, to build a wall across the hallway and prevent the pirates from moving through. Nanograph was infinitely customizable, but it took time to form new shapes. It wouldn’t be fast enough. He knew it in his heart, even as he urged the nanites to move faster.

  And who have we here?

  The boy froze at the sound of another voice in his head. It was unfamiliar, deep, and male. Someone like him – someone Talented – was inside his mind. He tried frantically to lock down his thoughts, to freeze like an ant that has just been noticed by a hungry spider.

  No need to fear me, boy. We are alike, you and I.

  The pirates were already moving past the partially formed wall. He couldn’t think, couldn’t focus to figure out what his next move should be. The voice in his head was such a shock it overshadowed everything else.

  The boy couldn’t help his curiosity. He’d never met anyone like himself before. Almost of their own accord, his thoughts reached out to the other mind. Who are you?

  Dimly, he was aware that the fight was all but over. Braxton and his crew, snarled in the foam, were easy prey to the pirates. A few more fell, but most were disarmed.

  A friend.

  The boy doubted that. He didn’t have any friends.

  The pirates rounded up the surviving mercenaries and locked them inside the cargo hold. He could hear Braxton screaming that he was going to kill them all. But those seemed like distant events barely worthy of the boy’s attention. All of his focus was on the mind connected with his. What did it want? Everyone wanted something.

  My name is Kai. I’m a pirate.

  The boy shrank away at those words, images filling his thoughts of everything he’d heard about the ruthless pirates who roamed fringe space. If even half of the tales were true, he’d be fortunate if they only spaced him.

  Don’t be afraid.

  The boy could feel Kai’s mind moving closer. He realized the man must be walking through the ship, trying to find him. Panicked, he started closing and locking every door, slamming them shut as fast as he could direct the nanites. He locked down the lift. What was he going to do? What could he do? He couldn’t jump away with the drive core cracked. Besides, the pirates were already aboard. Braxton’s people were locked up or dead.

  Boy, stop.

  The boy felt them cutting their way through doors. All of the locks in the universe would only hold for so long. He closed his eyes and began to count his breaths. A calming exercise a fellow slave once taught him.

  Let me help you.

  In his mind, the stranger’s tone was insidious and deceptive. Why would anyone, especially a pirate, help a slave?

  Even if by some miracle the pirates took what they wanted and left him here with Braxton, once the captain escaped the hold, he would blame the boy for this. For using the fire suppression system. For losing the ship.

  Braxton would surely kill him this time. And the pirates would do worse. They took slaves, sometimes. He’d heard the stories. The mercenaries delighted in telling him every detail of what he could expect if the ship ever fell to pirate hands.

  A fine trembling overtook his whole body. His teeth began to chatter in his skull.

  Maybe he couldn’t stop the pirates from getting to him, but he could stop them from hurting him. He turned his attention to the cracked drive core. It didn’t have the same self-repair systems the walls and hull did. It was too complex. Emergency protocol shut it down when it took damage. But he could force it awake again. And if he did, he could start a feedback cycle that would destroy the ship.

  We can help you.

  It would kill him too, of course. But there was a certain peace in that.

  Damn it, stop.

  The boy coaxed the drive back to life, syphoning power from other systems.

  Let me speak to him. Boy. This voice was new. Female. He froze, something about it so compelling that it broke through his frantic thoughts, scattering them.

  My Queen, you should not be here. Kai did not sound happy, and this, too, made the boy pause and think.

  There’s more than one of you? The thought was a whisper that escaped his attempts to control it.

  Feminine laughter filled his mind. Of course.

  How many?

  Why, all of us. The woman didn’t sound mad, or worried, or coaxing. She sounded amused.

  Something about her voice drew him. His heart thumped in his chest. He’d never been so scared in his life, and yet something about her calmed him better than the counting exercise. An old ghost of a memory surfaced. A woman’s hand brushing his hair back from his temple. It was soothing in the way that this woman was soothing. His fear drained away. He stopped drawing power, but held the drive core poised to be flooded, just in case.

  Who are you?

  My name is Lilith.

  Lilith. He tested her name out in his thoughts, mesmerized by it.

  It is customary to exchange names when meeting someone.

  I have no name. I am a slave.

  Silence. The boy felt something, like a tremendous pressure. It filled the silence and he sought out the comfort o
f the ship’s nanites in case the walls should crumple beneath the force of it. But nothing happened.

  When her voice came again, Lilith sounded empty of amusement. Instead there was a complete absence of emotion. No.

  Confused, the boy wondered if he’d missed a question someone had asked.

  No what?

  No, you are not a slave. You are not nameless.

  But I am.

  Not anymore. Lilith’s voice held more command than any of the masters he had ever served. You are one of us, and we do not tolerate slavery. You are free.

  The chain holding him to his alcove sheared and fell slack. He stared at it, uncomprehending as it clanged to the floor, hanging loose. It wasn’t nanograph, but pure titanium, like the bulkhead it attached to. He couldn’t manipulate it. Yet, something had sliced through it with the ease of a hot razor cutting wax.

  A scuff of noise made him look up, and he found himself staring up at the most beautiful face he had ever seen. Two people stood before him, though the door to the engine room was still closed and locked. How did they get in? One of them was a man, tall and intimidating. He wore an armored chest piece similar to what Braxton and his mercenaries used, but it had a faint pattern the boy recognized: nanograph, but lighter and more flexible than the ship. The most expensive armor on the market. Nearly impossible to get.

  The second person was a woman. Her dark hair fell in a long braid over her shoulder. She wore an armored vest and shirt, not nanograph, but the material fluid as only the most expensive armored clothing could be. Her face held a fierce, striking beauty. The boy met her startling green eyes and was enthralled. She reached a hand out to him, her skin a dusky bronze that made him think of sun-drenched planets.