Kairon looked down at the last of the dregs of beer in his glass. He swirled it around once and then downed the last of it. The ale had been pretty poor to start with, but the last warm dregs were particularly unpleasant. Kairon made a face and looked at his right hand man, Jarrick, out of the corner of his eyes. He couldn't remember if it was his round, or the hardened soldier's. One of the draught taps was leaking slightly. Kairon peered over the room of his glass to look at it, eyelids drooping. Drip-drop, drip-drop...
~
...drip-drop. The last of the fluid still leaked from the pneumatic pipes where they'd been severed. Brave move, the last of the guards had cut them from the outside, sealing the rest of the crew and their families inside. Of course they'd had to cut them outside, so they'd sealed their own fate too. One had died in the shooting, but the Captain now had the other one. Kairon could respect brave, but sometimes brave was stupid too.
He casually leaned on the bulkhead, cigarra hanging from his mouth. Leia, one of the newest lieutenants of the crew of the notorious pirate ship Bad Karma was hovering over the comm unit in the wall.
"Look, all we want is the crate of Lorios-X," she explained, referring to the medical compound that fetched a phenomenal price on the black market. It could be diluted a thousand times and still be sold as a powerful narcotic. "It's on the manifest and we haven't found it, it's all we want."
"We don't have it!" came the stoic reply. Clearly he was confident in the blast doors between them.
"It's all we want. We won't hurt anyone else, just hand it over."
"It. Isn't. Here."
Kairon grunted and started to shift his weight forwards, but Leia waved him back. He shrugged and returned to his previous relaxed posture.
"We've nearly cut through the hull, I've got a switch here that'll blow the last of it and space you all, so I suggest you consider cooperating."
"The the sake of the Force, we have women and children in here!" came the reply, a little bit less bold than before. Kairon heard the wavering tone and grinned.
"That didn't sound like 'yes' to me!" he shouted at the door, loud enough that they might have heard him without the comm. Leia glanced up at him with that look so many of the crew gave him. He wasn't entirely sure what it was, didn't care, but he was pretty sure it was the same look they gave the Captain when he got really worked up and started to do unpleasant things. Wasn't quite fear, wasn't quite disgust.
"Please, it was never put on board the ship," this time the voice was pleading
"Look, please, there's no need for any more blood, just hand it over, it isn't worth it." Leia replied quietly. Kairon was starting to suspect the young woman didn't have the stomach for this work. Then again, she was one of the Captain's favourites from the latest batch.
"Ah to hell with this," Kairon grunted and used his shatter gun as a prop to shift his bulk. "That the button?" he asked, looking at a datapad hanging from a bundle of wires.
Leia stepped between him and the device. She muted the two way comm. "Not yet!" she stated flatly. Kairon glowered. He drew himself up to his full height and stood over her, his expression turning dark.
"Not a good place to be," he growled. "Between me an' what I'm after."
She blanched, but held her ground. "There are women and children in there, we can resolve this. It's why the Captain sent me!"
"Yeah and we rigged up the nets over the breach, so we can resolve this my way and still find the loot. Why do you think the Captain sent me?"
He saw understanding dawn in her, she reached for the comm. "Please, just open up, we can search for the goods and..."
Kairon brushed past her, moving with surprising speed for his size. He slapped his hand against the on screen button. The bulkheads shuddered as the explosives went off. In an instant the comm unit crackled at the edge of its volume limit. There was screaming, a sound like a massive waterfall as the atmosphere evacuated. And then there was silence. The deathly still silence of a vacuum.
"My way was quicker." Kairon mumbled.
It turned out they'd been telling the truth all the time. One of the ship's boys had ticked off the manifest without bringing the crate aboard. Hell of a way to get a few hundred people killed, in Rees' opinion. Not that he'd lose any sleep over it, the lad had been near the first breach when the shooting started. All he had now was endless sleep.
Kairon was walking down one of the corridors on the Bad Karma when Leia caught up to him, anger etched into her features. Damned girl had too high a sense of her own worth if she was going to try and pull this.
"They didn't find the crate!" she shouted at him.
Kairon kept on walking with his long gait, forcing the shorter women to keep up. "Ah well, didn't take them too long to sort through the detritus then," he replied with a half shrug.
A series of expressions flashed across her face. Kairon was pretty sure one of them was surprise at the surly first mate with greasy lank hair using a three syllable word. "But they didn't have to die," she protested.
Kairon sighed, walking a few more steps before coming to a halt. "Look, captain and me had a chat bout you. Not sure you've got the will for this kind of work," he explained. Few did. They skimmed the bottom rung of society for those desperate enough to run with a crew like this. Put a pistol in their hand and pushed them through the breach first. More'n half the meat died on their first board, he knew.
"Maybe I just don't like the way you work," she replied stubbornly.
"So...you getting off?"
She shook her head, exasperated. "I cannot understand why you did that. Put me off at the next port."
"Hah and I don't think you understand how people leave the crew of the Bad Karma," he retorted.
Her brows furrowed for a moment. A question started to form on her lips. She should have noticed where they'd stopped. Kairon had her by the upper arm in a flash, holding her in a vice-like grip before using his weight to swing her into the airlock. He slammed his first down on the button, the inner door slamming closed. He watched her for a moment through the transparent port. Watched as realisation dawned on her face. She started to mouth a plea, but he could not hear her words.
"Shame, Captain said you were one of his favourites too," Kairon mumbled to himself before opening the airlock.
~
Kairon woke from his reverie with a start. Jarrick was prodding his shoulder. "Your round boss," his said with a smirk.
"Yeah, yeah," Kairon agreed, signalling for a refill from the bar and sliding over a few credit chits. "Where's Asmus?" he asked after his nephew. The stupid boy had a propensity to swagger about bragging about life as a smuggler. Problem was he had the uncanny ability to both find girls willing to listen and get himself into more trouble than he could handle.
"The cat said she'd watch him on the Quin," Jarrick replied, with a subtle nod of thanks for the full glass.
"Aww, you know she only says that so she can drop him off at the nearest brothel and go on the prowl," Kairon complained, looking into the depths of his glass.
"Hah, true enough!" Jarrick replied, seemingly unphased.
"We'll hopefully he brings something home with less tentacles this time."
Jarrick guffawed and wiped the front from his chin. "Yeah she - was it even a she? was hard to get off the Quin."
"It was all the suckers," Kairon replied, mimicking the 'popping' noise of a suckers being pulled off a surface.
The old soldier grinned at that. "One of these days the lad'll repay us by saving us from something scary," he mused.
"As if," Kairon replied. Buy inwardly he thought: he already has.
OOC/ unnecessarily long intro post, but I enjoyed it.
