No Shelter Among the Stars

Chapter 1-Hostages

Sixteen people knelt on the sterile white floor. They kept their hands pressed against the backs of their heads and tried to concentrate on the dim reflections cast in the floor of the ship. Chara snuck a glance at their captors. Her uniform, as white and clean as the interior of her ship, marked her as the Captain. She muttered something in an almost imperceptible whisper.

Suddenly one of her captors leveled a large gun at her head. She stiffened and eyed it defiantly. An expressionless humanoid built of metal, gears, and software stared down at her. Strange symbols and short bits of writing were etched into its metal skin. The sensor array that made up its face hummed faintly. She wasn't sure if it was calculating its next move or waiting for a command.

"What have we here?" asked one of the other captors, a human one. His voice had a practiced coldness. As he approached she kept her eye on the machine's weapon. It was a Vincit chopper, just one shell would take her head clean off and pepper the officer kneeling behind her. It was set on rapid fire.

"Ma'am?" said the human.

She looked up at him. His face was hidden behind a metal combat mask, making him appear hardly more human than the machine. Three bulletproof, green lenses whirred as they rotated and assessed her. A necklace of leather and pieces of bleached bone hung around his neck, contrasting with his black body armor.

"What's your name, captain?" he asked.

"Captain Chara," she replied.

"Captain Chara. I'm Tasla. What did you do to make Theta here, " he gestured to the robot, "want to point his chopper at you?"

She glared at him, feeling her emotions rise to the surface, but she reined them in with an effort. Her voice came out crisp and professional. "I asked how much longer this was going to take."

Tasla rested his hands on the twin pistols slung below his hips. His black combat suit was layered with angled armor, making him appear bigger than he actually was. She could see something other than bone hanging at the end of his necklace: a silver bullet. 

"I see," he said, his tone dripped with something like kindness. "Well, if you remember, I told you and your crew to stay quiet until we were done. Isn't that right Captain Chara's crew? Nod your heads."

Captain Chara glanced around as her crew nodded silently. One of her technicians was crying. He tried to wipe his eyes on his forearms without removing his hands from the back of his head.

"You see?" said Tasla. "So if you could keep your comments to yourself, I am sure Theta here will have no reason to slag you in front of your subordinates. Cuviche?"

She didn't understand that last word or the other snippets of some frontier dialect that the pirates had muttered to each other, but she lowered her eyes in assent.

"Good," said Tasla. "Keep it together people. Everything's aces, and in just a moment we'll all go our separate ways. A little thrill in our monotone lives. Am I right?" The robot, Theta, turned with a hum of servos and backed into a sentry position, but its chopper was still pointed at Captain Chara. Her technician, Korl, tried to stifle a sob.

"Hey, weepy," said Tasla, looking over at him. "You want to get a hold of yourself? You're bringing everybody down."

The man wiped his eyes again and blubbered something. Tasla seemed about to respond when the lights flickered overhead and the crackle of the ship's intercom split the air.