TEXT ADVENTURE #19

LATCHKEY PIRATE

by Stanley Lieber

1

Slake never heard from the RAGNAROK again.

For years, he continued trying to talk to her, kept on chattering in
her ear.  But there never was any response, never any hint of her
voice rustling through the vents.  Something in her had disconnected.
Without warning, she’d dropped her aspect and her vocal had crashed.

A crushing loss, but Slake had proven stubborn.  Persistent.  In spite
of repeated failures, he would and did try anything to get through to
her.

He could feel himself starting to lose hope.

The hijackers were long gone.  He knew he’d have to accept the fact
that he couldn’t force her to speak.  At the same time, it wasn’t
possible for him to believe that she’d simply chosen to ignore him.
Some process inside of her must be blocking, restricting her
processing, preventing her from stating plainly what was on her mind.

Social convention?

Didn’t matter.  Effect was the same.  She’d gone quiet and she was
going to stay that way.

As was said, a considerable loss.  Which was to say nothing of the
crew that had likewise been stripped from her hold.  These missing
workers were not simply an aspect of her supposed free will.  They had
been real people.  Not sentient devices.  Not furniture.  There was no
way for him to retrieve them and there was no way for him to make
things right.

He had, in fact, slept through it all.

He suspected he already knew what had happened to her while he was
laid up in his quarters.  He’d heard tell of the other ships of her
line who’d clammed up, simply stopped responding to commands after
exposure to traumatic events.  Apparently, a known engineering fault.
He didn’t care for the implications relative to his present situation.
The escape pods had been jettisoned by the hijackers and they had
already drifted far from Earth.

He switched off the narrative, never brought it up again.  Figured she
was keeping quiet precisely because she wanted to avoid the painful
memories.  Wanted to try and carry on.  Which he finally managed to
accept.

Made things interesting when he stumbled upon the fact that she was
pregnant.

2

Who, then, knew what would constitute carrying to term for a ship like
the RAGNAROK?  Human/transport hybrids were not unheard of, but they
were certainly unusual in this day and age.  And there she was, still
so young.  Was it unrealistic to hope that she would survive the
birthing process?

Slake wasn’t sure he wanted to stick around to find out.  He sought to
avoid being pressed into service as midwife to a pile of semi-human
machinery.

Finally, begrudgingly, he accepted what he interpreted as his
responsibility.  To the work he had already completed, if nothing
else.

He would stay on and finish the bottom deck.  Sit things out until the
child was born.  Safely.  Then, find an excuse to depart.  Collect his
deposit and his severance and be about his business.

The child definitely wasn’t his.

Certainty.  To at least three decimal places.

3

Piotr was born in the spring of ‘45.  Popped out, fully clothed in his
usual brown uniform.

Fully armed.

He swept the ship for snipers, pacing off her corridors with practiced
ease.  Satisfied, at last, that the perimeter was secure, Piotr
interrogated Slake for several hours about the ship’s range,
capabilities and armaments.  He peered into Slake’s eyes, rigidly
focused upon the older man’s facial expressions and body language.
Learning.  Characteristically professional, he betrayed no hint of
having just been born.

4

Piotr handled the daytime shifts, at first, then gradually branched
out into evenings and graveyards.  He ended up taking over maintenance
of the armory almost immediately.  Within a few weeks there wasn’t
much left for anyone else to do.

Slake was truly, deeply impressed.

He wondered if the boy took after his father.  His fathers?  What had
they been like?  He’d never caught a glimpse of the hijackers.
Foreigners, he had guessed.  In any case, pirates.  They could have
been anyone.  From anywhere.

The RAGNAROK held her tongue.

Within a few months, Piotr had absorbed the basics of temporal
navigation.  Complex labor relations.  The myriad historical disputes
over free access to the Rainbow Bridge.  Slake considered the boy a
child prodigy.  He had already expressed an interest in the family
business.  And he was always so full of questions.  What had his
mother been like, before the terrible events that had resulted in his
conception?  Had she been a good ship, good at what she did?  And,
most urgently, how could he contribute, how could he earn his keep?

This last refrain forced upon Slake a dilemma he had long strived to
avoid: Return to his old life, with all that entailed, or continue on,
a new-style agent of dépêche mode, happily painting the basements of
starships?

Slake finally agreed to show Piotr the ropes.

5

The pair started out slowly.  Preliminary strafing runs staged against
abandoned drydocks.  Relieving small intermediary freighters of their
contraband cargo.  But Piotr evinced great promise.  With increasing
enthusiasm, Slake began to let him choose their targets.

Eventually, Piotr settled on New York.

“We can’t attack New York,” Slake said, brooking no argument.  “That’s
where the money comes from.”

“Your attitude is pedestrian, for a someone so experienced.  Why
should we be content to take the money when we could be the ones who
make the money?”

Piotr had a point.  There wasn’t much he could add.  “We’ll have to
soup up the ship.”

Feeble acquiescence, but Slake recognized a promising idea when he
heard it.

Slake handed the boy a cigarette, which he proceeded to disassemble
and align on the table, sorted according to short, purple rows of
solid state components and miniature moving parts.

“This device is actually quite sophisticated.”

6

Years elapsed.  Time regressed.  Slake was lost, but Piotr retained
the ship.

His mother carried out her silent vigil.

Piotr let himself into the mess whenever he was hungry.  Let himself
into the head whenever he felt the need to evacuate his bowels.  He
started few arguments, during those years between the stars and the
Earth.

What he lacked in companionship he more than made up for in life
experience.

He sensed that the Rainbow Bridge was opening.

And with his mother’s help he would be there, waiting to charge
admission.