Julian wished they could have waited at Lockhard City long enough for the reports of the theft at Dante to come in. Clark’s histrionics over the tiniest minutia and the uproar it would have caused would no doubt amount to chaos on a massive scale and that’s a hard thing to walk away from with front row seats, getting to play the outraged customer. Hell, Julian thought, we might have even gotten our money back! With that he started to smile. Natasha noticed and her brows tightened.
“Vhat are you up too?” she asked suspiciously.
“Because I’m in a good mood I have to be up to something nefarious?” Julian asked with mock hurt.
“Yes,” answered Deacon and Guy as one. Natasha just smiled back and returned to her reading. “A History of The Pirates” by Daniel Defoe, Julian had given it to her as a birthday gift just before leaving New Antigua. It was a very rare original printing from many centuries ago. Almost everyone read from their portables these days but Julian never would except for work. There was just something about a book that you could see and hold that appealed to him, especially an old one with a history of its own.
Her English was even worse then her Esperanto, but she was progressing through it rapidly. Natasha spoke eleven languages, all of them atrociously. She was a voracious reader in each, however, a big believer in doing it in the original where possible.
Isabella IX filled the sky. He reminded himself that he needed to study-up on the giant as soon as he found time. He made his living among these colossi and knew that each had their ways and moods. He had been lax on this subject, distracted by Lockhard City.
Billy had been waiting at the Isabella II “port” as they insisted on calling it. Little more then a good flat patch of ground that had been roughly paved with a fueling station and a tiny one-floor office building comprised the entire facility. They could see the new corvette on the “launch pad,” a white circle painted on the blacktop, as they descended in the complimentary Lockhard shuttle that had brought them this far.
She was tube shaped, tapering to a blunt nose at the bow with a wide, external quad-thruster engine rig. She carried a crew of forty-two fully manned and could carry another eighty if you had no cargo aboard. Small by corvette standards but she was fast and nimble, packing the punch of some craft twice her size. He was very pleased with her and nearly salivating to see the new Iceni Queen fully outfitted and dressed to dance. Billy told him he had her painted before they put to space but would say no more.
“The only additional modifications beyond those discussed was the matter of the wing mounts,” Billy explained as they approached the Queen’s position on the third moon, their defacto home for the next five months. “I got an excellent deal on two fifty-millimeter rail guns, eight-barreled suckers, five-thousand rounds a minute. We also converted the underside nose turret to a forty-five-degree barbette so we could replace the triple type VII pulse lasers with two type IX’s.”
“Power loss on that?” Julian asked after some quick and ineffectual head-math.
“We actually gained about twelve-hundred kilowatts,” Billy said surprised. “The turret motors aren’t the most efficient, Floyd wants to replace them as soon as we have time to berth her.”
“That’ll have to wait ‘till this cruise is over.” Julian said, brushing the idea aside for now. “Lockhard has some excellent dock facilities but I’m not sure they’d be too keen on seeing us pull-up in their missing ship.”
“Speaking of cold welcomes and Floyd,” Billy interjected, “I pulled six of his best people and handed them over to Ursula. She’s been whipping them into shape to take the weapons officer slots on the Rapiers.”
“Wise,” Julian agreed. “I’ll handle Floyd.”
“And here she is . . . ” Billy said maneuvering slowly around her to give his passengers a good view. Her wings and aft quarter were blood red, the fore section of the ship was a pristine titanium white. Julian’s personal Roger appeared on the outer faces of the titan’s massive tail fin: A skull in white on a black field wearing a top hat and smoking a joint. Beneath, a bong and a boarding gun crossed in place of the tired bones or cutlasses. Julian saw the corvette reflected in the black metal of the tail as it passed.
“A round of drinks says Julian’s got wood right now,” Billy said with one hand on the controls and the second passing a spliff of New Antiguan Gold.
“Scurvy prick,” Julian said, accepting it and crossing his legs casually.
“What in the vast reaches of the spur are we listening to?” Guy asked out loud.
“Sheer Heart Attack,” Billy answered, a little put-off by the question. “Late twentieth century old era, a classic. Alice in Wonderland of rock albums.”
“Everything between World War Two and the God War is missing or restricted back in The Core,” Guy said.
Billy shook his head. “A generation of Limies born never hearing of Queen, will the horrors of The God War never relent?”
Guy studied Billy for a moment and asked, “Your accent, you’re an Earther right? An American?”
“Nope,” Billy informed him curtly, “Just from there, a strange and mysterious land called New Jersey. Let’s keep it that way.” Guy shrugged but accepted the vagaries. “And now, the topper,” Billy said as the pulled upward and back to view the primary hull from above. Standing twenty meters tall, nearly a quarter of the hull section’s length, stood a cloaked and armored woman holding a grounded spear lithely in one hand and a buckler hefted up to her side in vigilance. Scrolled above read the words:
“May your god have mercy
We will not.”
“FFB Iceni Queen” beneath in fine calligraphy, providing the ground upon which the warrior queen stood. As they drew closer, Julian saw the face of the great queen was that of his mother. Boadicea was famous on New Antigua. Arrived in wilder days, she was a leader of the community she helped to make of it. A modest bronze statue of her stood at the entrance of New Antigua’s very respectable, and all bound book, library. It was erected by the town council against her express wishes to have no monuments, no buildings named after her, “Not so much as a plaque on a park bench” as her will had put it, but they couldn’t help themselves. Julian made it a personal ritual to vandalize it every time he was in town because he knew she would find that funny.
Several people on the crew grew-up in the orphanage she founded, finding no shortage of orphans in those days. Deacon and Billy were the first and she had adopted them outright before realizing there were more urchins then could be handled in that fashion. Julian felt an odd emotion at that moment he couldn’t identify. It was squishy whatever it was and he didn’t care for it. Changing the subject in his own head, he asked Billy, “FFB?”
“Full-Fledged Bastard” Billy explained and Julian roared with delight, until Natasha smacked him for hanging onto the joint just as the corvette began to climb.
“Vee’re not landing?” Natasha asked.
“Nyet, veer docking,” Billy said with a grin.
“Sweet,” Julian said and leaned forward to get a clear view. Below them dust started to kick-up and the Queen lifted strait from the ground, the new thruster engines pivoting and pointing downward. At the sight of this Guy’s eyes looked as though they would pop from his skull.
“How in heaven’s name did you get her to do that?” asked, astonished to see the huge craft take to flight with such ease and grace. She was certainly not designed to do that.
Billy was paying close attention to his panel at that moment, even using both hands, so he cocked his head just slightly and explained, “We added two new buffers to the inertial grid and then just amped-up the juice five fold, makes her light as nothing.”
“Five-fold,” Guy asked for conformation, “extra buffers or no that’s too much power.”
“We rigged her to access all her redundant and auxiliary systems piecemeal, and we run our batteries about twenty-percent hot and fast-charge them off the reactor,” Billy explained. “They don’t last for shit that way but its worth having to replace them more for the power gain.”
“Gae Bolga, this is Iceni Queen, we are steady and ready for docking,” came Floyd’s static-charged voice.
“Well, I am quite high but what the fuck,” Billy said and began to raise up into the perfectly shaped slot in the Queen’s underbelly which Julian noticed was also entirely red. “Am I on vox?” Billy asked to no one in particular.
“Affirmative, Gae Bolga,” responded Floyd.
* * *
The three boys had their shirts off now, broiling in the hot New Antigua sun. They had just rotated the two huge piles of stones for the second time and this had gone on for two hours all told. They hoped Boadicea was being funny when she asked how many stones there were in each pile, not having mentioned the information would be requested. She was not being funny at all however. Julian had never seen his mother so cross as she had been outside the headmaster’s office. She came in with a poorly hidden “Oh, what have they done now?” grin on her face but emerged without it. He was glad at least Deacon and Billy hadn’t taken to blaming him for the whole thing and had resolved to beat the first one to do so into a pulp.
“How many?” she now demanded, seeming to appear out of thin air and causing all three of them to jump.
Julian drew a deep breath before answering. “There are four-hundred and thirty-six rocks in this pile,” he indicated the one they had been sitting on, “And four-hundred and thirty-five in the other.”
“Excellent work, boys,” she said with a nod. She then produced a marker and handed it to Julian. “Number them this time,” she said and strode off.
“At least she must be running out of variations on this,” Deacon said.
This proved to be not entirely correct as the next time she came out she picked up a rock, flipped it over and said “Both sides,” before turning to leave again. “And then come inside and shower, the lot of ya. You stink like hell at low tide.” she added over her shoulder.
Julian’s mother had lobbied the council long and hard to have the community school built, putting up a sizable amount of her own credit in the bargain to get it finnished which was nothing compared to getting it staffed. She had contacted a university professor from the Core Worlds who had been dismissed from her job amid charges of sedition that had a brief half-life in the media. The offer, to build an educational system of her own from scratch appealed to her greatly. She, in turn, somehow convinced a number of retired, fired, and disaffected teachers into moving to the Rift, in some cases with entire families.
Mrs. Harriot Tyler-Matsushita was old school. She was sparse in praise and feared in anger which is no small feet for a ninety-year-old woman hardly five feet tall living in a pirate outpost. She was happy to see that the children of New Antigua were lettered and remarkably proficient in mathematics when she arrived. An education is necessary in a culture that depends on trade and space travel so parents traditionally schooled their own children or shared the responsibility in small groups. There had never been a formal school before however, and the new concept was much maligned from all sides.
The parents thought it intrusive and unnecessary, they had been turning-out talented spacers for generations before the celebrity murderess/whore ever showed her face on this planet, the children were convinced they were trapped in some Orwellian reeducation camp, and the tiny but oh so vocal Christian segment of the population pointed to this as yet another of the bloody Jezebel’s infernal blasphemies.
But she had a mission and a partner in Harriot. They were a strange pair, the Madame and the School Marm, but an uneasy truce was founded on the great lengths both had already gone to. In the end they were close, if cantankerous friends.
At length the proper leverage for each obstacle was divined. Reason with the parents, this would relieve a great burden on them and ensure a good uniform level of equality which was highly valued in these parts. Sanctions and intimidation (both of which they needed to learn anyway) for the kids, and punching Sister Angelina in the mouth for the crossers. The school was open and despite many, many, setbacks along the way that first year, had come to be not only accepted but praised by most of the community. Plans were already being drawn-up for several more. The traditional summer-off was adopted, lasting three months of the year. The summers on New Antigua were sweltering, plus the children needed specialized vocational training that was beyond their reach as yet. Besides, they would have mutinied at a year-round schedule in any case.
Harriot was insistent that the year be capped off with a formal dance. Boadicea immediately had a bad feeling about the idea but Harriot was intractable on the point, stating that half the school’s job was to socialize the students and traditions had to be established for the project to take root in its tentative soil. Boadicea relented in the end but couldn’t shake the feeling no good would come of it, especially by making it mandatory, though admittedly none of them would go if it wasn’t. Her intuition at least would be satisfied.
“What unbelievable bullshit,” Julian lamented as he sunned himself like a lizard on the quarry rocks where he and several of his “classmates” had gathered to cajole one another over this absurd injustice and, most importantly, to get very high. Deacon had procured a fine specimen of snowed Cartagena red hair and they were all very eager to indulge, each counting himself a connoisseur.
“It’s one fucking night,” Deacon said dismissively.
“It’s a matter of honor,” Billy interjected.
“Fuckin’ Yarr!” Julian proclaimed in affirmation and several others joined-in. “We should all show up with a bunch of sleazy port hookers as our dates,” he added casually and everyone had a good laugh. In a perfect world, Julian would have left it at that.
“How much of that do we have?” he asked Deacon who gave him a quizzical and unhappy look.
“About a half-kilo,” Deacon said hesitantly.
“Excellent,” Julian brightened, “we won’t need a third of that.”
Over the next few days Julian had sold off their excess herbage and made arrangements with a charming gentleman named Rufus down at the port for a dozen of his finest bitches. Rufus was with a handsome girl named “Mina” when Julian first met with him. He decided at once she was perfect and would indeed escort Mis Mina himself.
“All she wants for is a change-maker on her belt,” he said to Rufus when she left them.
“Two days and twenty more I can make that happen,” Rufus told Julian and made the sale to another satisfied customer.
Withe the funding left Julian bought a large quantity of alcohol, these ladies were their shock troops and they wanted them good and liquored-up, so as to use them to best effect. For their personal use he had acquired a small quantity of the native jinx root. It would be a night to remember.
His head swam a brightly colored ocean of sewage. Had they gone too far? Perhaps, but that was the sport of it. They had gathered at their traditional headquarters, the small abandoned warehouse just on the fringe of the port quarter. They had acquired the property at a very reasonable price through a front, one of the patrons of his mother’s brothel who, it turned-out, liked the grav ball. From here they would run errands and gather information for the local smugglers. The business was nearly a year old now and they were doing well for themselves, it was a bachelor’s paradise of ugly comfortable furniture and every nifty electronic gadget that money and connections with an interstellar smuggling operation could buy. Behind the bar was an old-fashioned neon sign that read: “Rat-Bastards Amalgamated” Billy sat there enthralled to the blinking words, trapped in the eddies of their rhythm: RAT–BASTARDS–AMALGAMATED–RAT–BASTARDS–AMALGAMATED RAT–BASTARDS–AMALGAMATED . . .
Deacon snapped his fingers sharply in Billy’s face. “Get it together, man!“ he commanded. “They’re here.” Those cognizant to do so rose to their feet to meet their guest properly. Some repeatedly bounced off walls, convinced that if they aligned the molecules in their bodies just so, they could pass through.
“I think I ate too much,” Billy told the strange reptile-man that sounded like Deacon.
“You did,” the lizard agreed, “I saw you.”
“I thought as much,” Billy said, “Where are we going?”
“That fucking dance,” Deacon sighed, “are you up to this?”
“I’m a total professional,” Billy assured him, somewhat indignant at the suggestion but unable to stand on his own, let alone to walk away in a huff. “Doc Ellis pitched a no-hitter trippin’ his face off on acid. I think I can handle a school dance,” he said, adjusting his collar and falling on his face.
Julian, fresh from a close encounter with a doppleganger in the lavatory mirror, emerged from the tiny raised office above the floor and began making his way along the catwalk for the stairs. He hopped on the railing, sliding smoothly and deftly to the end where he promptly tumbled to the ground. He lay there a brief moment and sprang to his feet, dusting himself off and straitening his long coat. A moment later he bounded for the table in the center of the room and began to speak with sweeping gesture.
“Good folk who hail from near and far,
Come hear a tale of savagery!
Of decadence and the bizarre,
Of weirdness in the first degree;
A song of vice and felony
For drunkards to take-up and sing.
And so I call on all of thee:
All hail the mighty Bastard King!
At dawn, beneath the morning star,
The blue moon at its apogee,
Upon the back seat of a car
Was born a strange anomaly.
A man of fractured frequency,
Of guile and bedeviling;
A truly twisted entity:
All hail the mighty Bastard King!
The drunken, whoring avatar
Of madness and debauchery,
He both roams wide and ranges far
To sow the seeds of anarchy.
Come put aside your drudgery,
It’s time to get a’capering.
Drink-up without apology:
All hail the mighty Bastard King!
Gentlemen, ladies fair, come see
A wild world of reveling!
Come party with impunity:
All hail the mighty Bastard King!”
With that he jumped gingerly from the table and turned-up his collar as he spoke. “Gentleman!” he said, adding “Ladies,” with a bow. “The night is young and so are we. We’re dashing, well dressed . . . And hallucinating ferociously. Let’s go do some chaos!” And he led the way with his outstretched hand, aiming on the horizon.
The boys were cleaned-up and eating in the next room while Boadicea was straitening up for a moment in the kitchen. She shook her head and muttered curses over their stupidity and then found herself laughing in turn. She hated rewarding them after such a stunt but she wanted the news off her chest and it might get them to wrap-up whatever nefarious nonsense they were up to down by the port quarter. They were going to go their own way in the end so why not offer a middle ground. She knew Jack would look after her boys and this way they’d be learning a trade that would grant them considerable standing in the Rift Worlds. Assuming it didn’t kill them but that was as real a possibility anywhere in the Rift. They would be all right, clever lads all. She began then to snicker over the reported rage of Sister Angelina who was present with her husband, Reverent Jimmy to see for themselves, as Headmistress Matsushita assured them, that nothing off-color would be going on in her school. The thought of Harriot sobered her quickly. She wasn’t even mad, just disappointed. It drove Boadicea insane like an unreachable itch. The woman always knew just how to get to her.
Just then she caught a glimpse of movement outside. She looked up to see the hedge outside her property shaking about. “What now?” she asked in aggravation. Just then she saw Sister Angelina’s head pop up and then quickly down. It then raised slowly, she was holding something. Boadicea squinted, laughing to herself. What is that shriveled old twat doing now? She thought, recording me again?
She shouted through the window, “Sorry honey! Nothing sinful tonight, just gonna clean up and go to bed!” She thought she heard glass shatter. |
Submission Name: Iceni Queen 6--A Rolloking Band Of Pirates We
