A Pirate Story
“Airlock cycle complete.”
With a hiss of escaping air, the door slid open. Three figures in space suits entered the cargo hold. The two largest figures carried an ornate crate. As the door closed, they put the crate on a bench and started taking their suits off.
“I can’t wait, Hurk!” one of them said. He took off his helmet and put it aside.
“The Captain won’t believe this, Gant! She’ll cover us in gold!” Hurk was also male.
“Not literally, I hope,” Gant laughed.
“Hurry, runt!” Hurk said.
The runt was the third member of the party. She took off her helmet.
“My name is Selt,” she said.
“I’ll call you whatever I want, grunt. Your race deserves nothing else. Don’t make me angry.”
“I’m as much a part of this crew as you are, Hurk,” she said. He stood a head taller than she, yet Selt stared at Hurk defiantly. “I’ve already proved myself.”
“You two are insufferable,” Gant said. He pushed them aside and approached the crate. “How can we open this? There are no locks!”
Selt and Hurk stared at it. They had been calling it a crate, but that was so they wouldn’t feel disappointed: the lid was a work of art, filigrees and curlicues covering the whole surface. Gant slid his hand over the ridges.
“Scan this,” he said.
Selt took off her hand scanner and pointed it at the crate. A faint blue beam travelled over the surface, as she walked around the object.
“The underside was smooth?” she asked looking at her screen distractedly.
“Better make sure,” Gant said. “Hurk, slowly.”
They lifted the crate above Selt and she scanned under it.
Her scanner beeped.
“What is it?” Hurk asked, as they put it down.
“Let me see…” Selt moved to a particular point on the lid, near a corner. “Here. The scanner has recognized these patterns as a script. It says, ‘Things fall apart; the center cannot hold’.”
“What?” said Hurk.
“And what does that mean?” Gant added.
Selt stared at her screen for a few seconds, then discarded it and bent over the crate. She caressed the surface.
“I think… I think I got it,” she said. “These indentations, here, here…” she pointed at particular points on the periphery of the lid. “It seems to me this is like one of those puzzle boxes. You move the pieces in a certain manner, it opens.”
“How so, runt?” Hurk said.
She ignored him.
“The phrase made me think of it. The pieces fall apart, and you get to the center.”
“Alright, let’s do it,” Gant said.
“Wait!” Hurk said. “What if it’s booby trapped?”
“The scanner picked up nothing!” Selt protested.
Gant looked at Hurk.
“You open it, Selt,” he said.
Selt sighed. It was expected. They stepped back and activated their respirators. She did the same, and approached the lid once again. She touched the script, right to left, then slid her finger to the closest indentation to the left, and pressed it.
A thin piece of the lid disappeared. Encouraged, she went on. For every indentation, a different piece moved aside, until a square cavity was revealed.
“It’s open,” she said.
Hurk and Gant came closer and looked inside.
It was empty.
“Empty?” Hurk complained.
“Wait,” Selt said. “There’s another mark in there. Just let me…”
As she pressed it, there was a hiss, and the lid started raising slowly. The three stepped back.
Inside the crate lied a silvery globe.
“Is that what I think it is?” Selt said.
“Yes it is!” Gant said.
“A Tarakian astromap!” said Hurk. “Locked! Who knows where it may lead!”
“The Captain will love this!” said Gant, and he took the globe. As one, he and Hurk left for the bridge. They didn’t bother saying anything to Selt. She didn’t even sigh, and simply followed them.
***
“A Tarakian astromap no less,” Captain Ato said. “You know what this means?”
“Not exactly,” Selt said. “I’ve only heard about them.”
“This is what was once called a treasure map. They never fail, if they’re locked. Find an open one, sell it to a collector, but that’s all. But a locked one… This is my third one.”
“Can you unlock it?”
“Oh yes, I can,” Ato said. “The ship’s computer knows how. It takes time, however,” she said, as she got closer to Selt. Ato caressed Selt’s cheek. “Did you have problems with Hurk and Gant?”
“The usual. They’re a couple of morons,” Selt said. “Especially Hurk.”
“They’re crew. We’re pirates. You know what they say about pirates,” Ato said. She unzipped Selt’s jacket. “Hmm, I like your people. And I like you, have I told you before?”
****
A beam of light crossed the cargo bay. The light stopped on the crate.
“Right where we left it,” Selt whispered. “Sloppy pair of idiots.”
She touched the script on the lid. The cavity was open, as they had left it.
“So… ‘Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.’ Pirates, how uncultivated you are. If you really knew ‘my people’, you would have recognized the phrase. House Rackkar.”
She slid her finger down the side of the crate instead. She stopped when she noticed yet another indentation, and pressed it. In the silence, there was a barely audible click. Selt walked around the crate, touching more points in turn.
She was happily humming in a low voice, when she hit the last one.
A line appeared in the crate, and the whole upper half slid aside, this time without a hiss or a sound. Selt saw what looked like a black jacket uniform inside, neatly packed.
“People from House Rackkar, I salute you,” Selt said. She twitched her whiskers. “A warrior exo-armour, no less.”
She touched the exo-armour. The uniform leaped as if it was alive, and started covering her, head included.
“Visor,” she wished, and the armour shifted around her eyes.
“Weapons,” she murmured. The uniform complied.
“Pirates, eh?” Selt said. “My time of revenge has arrived.”
She left the cargo bay. Underneath the armour, she grinned fiercely.
~~~~
This is my entry for this week’s Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge: Things Fall Apart, The Center Cannot Hold. The challenge this week was to write 1000 words inspired in the words of the poem “The Second Coming” by Yeats:
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
And after a long week with no ideas, here’s my story. Space pirates and the start of a revenge, people.
