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That was all fine and good, but the ship could have a hundred crew on it. We hadn’t seen anyone else yet, but it was half a kilometer long, large enough to just not have bumped into anyone during our short trip.

  “I remember looking at the Maverick guy—he was strutting over to the bar with a smarmy grin on his face—and thinking that we didn’t have to take out the whole ship, just lop the head off the snake.”

  “ ‘Snake’ was right,” Angela interjected. “I wish we’d actually killed him then and there. Would have saved a lot of people a lot of pain.”

  Tanis shrugged. “Maverick was worse than most, but still better than some. So long as Silstrand let people like him operate in the fringe, things weren’t going to change no matter who we killed—not that I disagree with you, Ang. I’m just not going to get torn up about it.

  “OK, so, Cheeky was getting her bikini in a twist over the sex slaves, and I wasn’t keen on them either, so I replied,

  “ she asked at that point. Now, my plan was really just to beat the shit out of these guys, but I needed to make sure they didn’t cause problems before our ship was refitted and disembarked. Which meant I needed to get them, and their ship, undocked and out of there.

  “The room we were in was a big oval, more or less. There were a lot of couches in various arrangements around its edge, most clustered around rings in the floor where other slaves probably found themselves from time-to-time. Cheeky was leading the four guys to one of the seating areas close to the bar, and Maverick had poured two drinks and was offering one to me.

  “ I told her.”

  “Which was my job,” Angela added. “Tanis is lazy as all get-out when it comes to managing her own nano.”

  Tanis shrugged. “It’s your nano, too. OK, while Angela was flooding the room with nano—we have what’s called ‘nanocloud tech’, where we can direct nanoscopic probes through the air. I can also make more on demand, so dropping a million probes into the air isn’t a big deal. They move slow, though, so it takes a bit to scour a whole room.

  “I took the drink Maverick offered—bourbon, if I recall, and not bad, either—and listened to him tell me all about how awesome he was. He kept trying to get me to take off my jacket, but I did my best to distract him. I didn’t want him to see the pulse pistol I had in a holster under my left arm. By then, Cheeky and the four guys were completely naked. They started out sitting around her while she danced for them—someone had turned on some music when we came in and she was moving to it like a panther in heat. I have to admit, she was totally mesmerizing. Even Maverick was watching her as he talked to me about all the ships he had under his command.

  “I have to admit, if Maverick hadn’t been a slave-owning pirate scumbag, I would have been impressed; he’d done well for himself.

  “By the time Angela had found the four autoturrets and disabled them, we were on our second drink, and Cheeky was half buried in the men. I would have felt bad for her, but she seemed to be having the time of her life. Normally, watching a bunch of people group-fuck their brains out is either gross or downright hilarious, but somehow Cheeky made the whole thing look like a beautiful dance. The girl really had a skill unlike any I’ve ever seen.

  “Maverick was almost salivating. ‘She’s going to make a great addition to my collection back on Jericho,’ he told me with a predatory glint in his eyes. I could tell he was challenging me to do something about his proclamation.

  “That was the moment. I said something lame, like ‘over my dead body, asshole’. Then I took my glass and slammed it into his face.”

  Tanis looked down at her hand and clenched it into a fist. “Don’t let the package I come in fool you, I can pack a pretty good punch. The glass shattered and broke his upper jaw, and sliced most of his nose off, too. It would have cut my hand to ribbons, but I’d secreted a film of flowmetal over my skin, so I only got a small cut on my palm.”

  Tanis held out her hand to those around the table, and showed her palm turning silver, then back to flesh-color.

  “So after I nailed him in the face, Maverick hit the deck like the sack of shit he was, and I pulled out my pulse pistol and turned to the mini-orgy that was going on. I called to her over the Link.

  “She was a riot, I can still remember the pout she had on her face when she said,

  “I don’t know how she could stand having sex with those guys. They were not the most attractive—or kempt—people you’d ever seen. Cheeky always maintained that there was something beautiful in everyone. She never lost that innocence—which, given what she went through in life, was a miracle.

  “I stood there tapping my foot, and she finally managed to pull away from three of the four guys—at that point, no one was being too discriminate as to what they were doing with who. I stepped up and fired my pulse pistol into the backs of two heads before the third guy noticed that the other two had gone limp. He turned to me, but got a pulse blast in the face.

  “’Cheeky!’ I yelled. At that point, she was doing some sort of scissor thing with the fourth guy, and there was a lot of passionate toe-sucking in the mix. I was a bit stunned, and said something like, ‘You don’t know where those toes have been!’

  “Cheeky just smiled with half the guy’s foot in her mouth, but didn’t stop what she was doing. It had never occurred to me that she got intoxicated by her own pheromones, but around then, I realized she was as far gone as the guys were—maybe more.

  “I was about to pull her free, when I heard a sound behind me and turned to see Maverick duck behind the bar. He—”

  “Hold up, Tanis,” Angela interrupted again. “I think it’s worth noting at this point that I’d been trying to get your attention for seven-point-three very long seconds. You were too busy thinking about getting Cheeky to show you how to do that move with Joe.”

  Tanis felt a flush rise in her cheeks. “Yeah, well, if it wasn’t with some slimy pirate, I would have been all for it. OK, where was I?

  “Maverick came to,” Amanda supplied.

  “Right, got it. Maverick dove behind the bar. I heard some sort of strange snorting sound that I realized was laugher. Honestly, I was impressed that he could breathe with the ruin I’d made of his face, let alone put up a fight. He must have had some sort of pain suppression mods.

  “He stood up wearing this really revolting half-smile—especially gross, because his upper lip was torn half off and stuck over on his cheek—and then ignites a plasma sword. A fucking plasma sword! Who uses something like that? Those things are nearly as dangerous for the person holding them as anyone else.

  “Just one droplet of plasma will burn right through your torso in seconds. Sure, they have mag fields to hold it all in place, but it doesn’t take much for one of those to fail. Then everyone burns to ash…or whatever.

  “I yelled something at him about putting it down, and he just continued to give that disgusting smile. I fired my pulse pistol at him, but the mag fields on the sword disrupted the pulse wave enough that it didn’t hit him with anything stronger than a mild slap.

  “I started dropping nano on him,” Angela added. “Or trying to, at least. He was waving the sword around like a lunatic, and it was frying any nano in the air around him. What few I did manage to land on him were destroyed by his internal defenses.”

  “Right,” Tanis said with a nod. “I had to do it the old-fashioned way. Cheeky was still fucking her brains out, and I didn’t want any plasma to splatter around her, so I backed away in the other direction. I grabbed everything I could and threw it at Maverick; a few vases, a bottle of wine. For a guy missing half his face, he did pretty well at avoidi
ng it all. Then I got behind an armchair that I could get a good grip on, and tossed it at him. He managed to slice it in half, but one side hit him and knocked him back.

  “I figured it was my best opening and rushed him. I leapt off a sofa and slammed a boot into his face. It sent him stumbling backward, but he managed to hold onto the sword. I grabbed another wine bottle as I closed with him. When he swung at me with the sword, I ducked low and slammed the bottle into his wrist, knocking it up and out of the way. Then I swung the bottle around and into the side of his right knee.

  “It was enough to finally drop him, and I planted my knee on the wrist of his sword-hand, pinning it down. I tell you, I was certain he was going to cut my leg off with that thing, but somehow, I managed to get off two pulse shots into his face before he could swing it around.

  “He was finally out, his face a complete ruin. His eyeballs were popped, so even if he did come to, he wasn’t attacking again. Still, I kicked the sword out of his hand before turning back to Cheeky—who was in a new and exciting position with the last guy. As far as I could tell, they were completely oblivious to what had just gone on.

  “I pulled her off him and shot him in the face. I might have done it a few times more than necessary—I was a bit jacked on adrenaline at that point.”

  “You think?” Angela’s tone was more than a little sardonic.

  “Yeah, well, seeing his face turn into pudding snapped Cheeky out of it, and that’s what I needed most right then. She was too stunned to say anything at first, but then she rushed over to the three people who were chained up—none of whom had said anything yet—and tried to get their collars off.

  “The collars were locked on, so I sent her off to find clothes for them—there were some anterooms off the main room we were in—and deposited some nano on the collars, breaking the locks and freeing them.”

  “This is when we realized that Maverick had triggered a general alert on the shipnet,” Angela said. “I had avoided hacking their network until then—I didn’t want to trip any alarms—but at that point, I figured why not breach the thing?”

  Tanis had taken a bite of her BLT while Angela spoke and quickly swallowed to add, “So she was hacking, and I was freeing the slaves, when Cheeky comes out of a side room with four more slaves—these ones clothed.

  “ ‘Uh, Tanis, I think we’ve got a full-on harem in here.’ Which was just what we needed. Cheeky had come down off her high enough to be stubborn, and insisted that we free them all. She was pretty insistent about the whole thing, too, stomping her feet and all. I really didn’t need the push. I wasn’t going to leave them there, but needless to say, getting what turned out to be twenty-two people off the ship was going to be tricky—especially given what Angela discovered.”

  A rueful laugh came from above the beer pitcher in the center of the table. “Yup, bad news was that there was a crew compliment of sixty-four, and fifty-five of them were aboard at the time. Good news was that the ship didn’t have an AI. I was able to get control of its main systems and lock down about half of them down in short order.

  “We found clothes for all the slaves, but there weren’t any other weapons in the room. I wasn’t touching that plasma sword with a ten-meter pole. So, it was me with just a pulse pistol, Cheeky—who was still leaking pheromones like mad—and twenty-two slaves who were a quarter-terrified, a quarter-grateful, and half-ready to jump Cheeky’s bones.

  “Cheeky, of course, hadn’t bothered to find clothes for herself, but had put her shoes back on at some point.”

  “I can support her shoe thing. Not sure about the running around naked, but if it’s a look she works then she is a girl after my own heart,” Bethany Anne said with a grin.

  Tanis nodded. “We exited the room and didn’t see anyone. There were too many of us to take the lift and I didn’t want to split the group up, so we found a ladder shaft and worked our way down. I tell you, I’ve been in a lot of hairy situations in my life, but that one really rattled me. Cheeky had made me swear that we’d get them all out, and I’d internalized that promise.

  “One deck above where the umbilical connected, two pirates—women this time—caught up with us at the ladder shaft. I was already on the next deck down, but Cheeky somehow managed to seduce them in five seconds flat. After that, the former sex slaves beat the shit out of them.

  “Two minutes later, we were just about at the umbilical, when Angela alerted me to a group of fifteen well-armed enemies guarding the exit. Our sad little convoy of souls was bottled up in a long corridor that dumped out into the chamber the enemy occupied, and behind us was an intersection. The internal sensors showed enemies approaching from back there as well.”

  “And we were loooow on nano,” Angela added. “I’d used a lot scouting the ship and taking control of its drive systems—we had to get the thing to undock and leave the station after we were off.”

  Tanis let out a rueful laugh. “Yeah, so that was a pretty serious ‘oh shit’ moment. Like I’d said before, I can do five or six people without trouble—provided there’s some cover. But fifteen is a different story entirely. I remember looking over at Cheeky and seeing her kissing one of the women we’d rescued. I was about to cuff her upside the head when I had an idea: from the ship’s cameras that Angela had finally hacked—”

  “Hey!” Angela spoke up again. “I was doing a lot of stuff. Turns out there was a nasty non-sentient AI aboard, and it was fighting back—the thing kept trying to depressurize the part of the ship you were in. All you had to do was walk through a passageway.”

  Tanis snorted. “Yeah, and not get my head shot off. You wouldn’t do well fighting against the ship’s NSAI if that happened.” Angela didn’t reply, and Tanis continued her story. “With the camera access, we could see that the pirates had armored up. Well, not all of them, but nearly all. It was powered armor too, which meant if we could hack it, we could lock it up, and they’d be about as threatening as angry statues.

  “Problem was, we didn’t have enough nano to get it out to all of them fast enough. But then I looked at Cheeky: the perfect delivery system. Angela sent most of our nano back in a cloud to deal with the enemy approaching our rear, and I grabbed Cheeky’s shoulder, dumping half my remaining nano on her.

  “ ‘Cheeks,’ I said to her. ‘I need you to take the show on the road. Take your new friend if it helps, but you have to get out there and dance around every one of those pirates. Make sure you touch each and every one of them.

  “The look in her eyes was priceless. I still don’t know to this day if it was fear or excitement, but she gave one short nod, and then pulled the clothes off the girl she’d been kissing. It didn’t take long, they were already almost all off.

  “I touched her partner too and deposited the last of my nano on her, and off they went. Cheeky had the presence of mind to wave the woman’s shirt around the corner before they stepped out. I breathed a sigh of relief when the enemy lowered their guns a bit before the pair walked out.

  “It was one hell of a show they put on. Cheeky had picked the right partner, and the two of them spun and danced through all those pirates like they were leaves floating on the wind. I don’t save all the visuals of what I’ve witnessed in my life, but I’ve kept that one for sure. I replayed it for Joe once, and we had a fantastic time afterward.”

  Tanis hadn’t meant to say that last part, and felt her cheeks redden.

  “Do you still have it?” Amanda asked with a wry grin. “I mean, you know, for research purposes….”

  A laugh escaped Tanis’s lips and she placed a hand on Amanda’s forearm. “You and Cheeky would get on famously. Right, on with the tale, the pirates didn’t see them as a threat, due to both women being stark naked. Within thirty seconds, Cheeky and her friend dosed the pirates with enough nano to hack their armor.

  “Problem was, I couldn’t get Cheeky to stop. She’d gravitated toward three pirates who weren’t wearing armor, but I needed her to clear out so I could rush them.


  “ I told her. Her response was half in moans, but I was able to make out something about them being more fun. I think it took a solid minute to convince her to move on, and then another thirty seconds for Cheeky to pull her friend along with her.”

  “That’s when I locked the armored ones down,” Angela said from above the beer pitcher as General Lysander refilled his glass.

  “And I rushed the others. They were totally fixated on Cheeky at that point—even more than the others, since the unarmored ones didn’t have any protection against her pheromones. Taking them down was a breeze. Then I signaled the other rescue-ees to come into the room, and they all started to pile up around Cheeky. She’d released so many pheromones to bypass the armored pirates’ air filters, that even my head was swimming at that point. I finally managed to convince her that they could all have a big orgy on the gantry, and shoved her into the umbilical and back to the the station. It was like watching a herd of goats follow the leader. Once she floated on down, the others all dove into the umbilical after her.

  “There were still a dozen pirates roaming the ship, but I liberated some weapons from the frozen guards and took them out. It was quick work, since they were all advancing on our position.”

  Tanis paused and laughed. “Plus, I was able to use their armor-locked pals for cover. Anyway, about fifteen minutes later, I sealed up the exit and floated back down the umbilical to the station, only to find the orgy still in full swing. Angela had gotten the pirate ship into the station’s departure queue, and once I cleared the station-side airlock, the umbilical folded up and the Penultimate detached from its mooring.

  “I won’t lie, it took every fiber of my being not to join in with Cheeky and the people we’d saved. I might have kissed a few of them, I don’t really remember—”

  Angela chuckled. “I remember, she did a good bit of kissing, and—”

  “Annnnyway, what I do remember is that I only just barely managed to get Cheeky out of there before station security showed up.