Part 1

Marika didn’t care much for birthdays. Everyone seemed to use them as an opportunity to remind her what she should be, what some nebulous shadow-Marika was doing or feeling or wanting. Every year she opened package after package of pretty silk robes, cooking spices, and the latest romance novels pilfered from the best cruise ships; every year, with the same fixed smile. This year, her fourteenth, the mendacity of the whole ritual was too much for her. She only smiled at one present, from her cousin Lubi, a fine new rope-toy for Pakriti. Lubi’s brown eyes lit up when he saw her real, honest smile of thanks.

Lein’s face contracted with disapproval and she headed to intercept Marika as the whole merry mass of pirates, piratelings, and piratewives moved to the dining area for sweets. Marika braced herself for a maternal barrage on the topics of sullenness, ingratitude, and unseemliness, but before the words could be fired, the attack klaxon screeched from every speaker on every side.

The pirates, to a man, made for the armories, birthday forgotten. Marika and Pakriti swarmed along with them, but were stopped at the door by the thick, ink-traced arm of Marika’s father, Captain Darelm. Wordlessly, he shook his braided head.

“But father, it’s my birthday!” she grinned bewitchingly, and, as he persisted in impassivity, went on, “I’ve been training and training to be able to fight… and it’s my fourteenth birthday, when a child becomes a pirate!”

That did get a response, a sneer. “A boychild becomes a pirate. A girlchild becomes a wench. So get ye to the women’s quarters and lay low ‘til the all-clear. Ye’ve nothin’ to do in the men’s world, so best go cower in the women’s.” He stepped back and punched the door closed, nearly clipping Marika’s nose.

The common quarters were empty, all the families already taking cover in their own rooms. “Father! FATHER!” Marika hollered, pummeling the door. “Darelm!” she added more audaciously still, for none aboard the ship dared drop the ‘Captain’. No one opened the door, or even admonished her over the speaker. The hollow thrummings and rhythmless percussion of ship-to-ship coupling and combat ran tantalizingly through the hull under her feet, and Marika looked at Pakriti. It is a measure of the depth of her rage that she thought Pakriti looked angry, too. “Cower indeed! I’ll…” Marika trailed off. The same rage and the same ebbing powerlessness had flowed over her many, many times. There was nothing she could do. The tinker-pirates had gamely thwarted every bit of progress she’d ever made towards opening the docking sections, and there were no conduits or back ways. There was no way she’d ever get to the battle to prove herself.

Marika blinked, her unshed tears pulling at the image of a romance novel her Auntie Nuna had given her. A golden-haired man in a Fed uniform dipped a purple-haired beauty over the words The Cruel Cold of Space. Probably Nuna had only parted with it because the hero was a Fed - no pirate would approve of his wife reading such a thing, and most piratewives had their own prejudices - but Marika stared right past the blue and gold uniform, to the fiery space battle forgotten behind the torrid kiss.

With a shriek of glee, Marika leapt down the empty hallways, feet tingling from the vibrations of the fight and her pet loping along behind her. She skidded to a halt in front of the shuttle airlocks. “Pakritums Pakritiwikins Pakriti the Glorious and Fearsome!” she trilled, scooping up the monkat and poking his nose at the computer screen, “What do you want to bet me they never made ANY security tweaks to this lock?” Pakriti didn’t seem to want to bet anything, and she let him fall into a taut, ready crouch on the metal plating. She ran the very first, most facile of all the cracks she’d written and hidden in the main data banks, and the screen shimmered into a green glow of acquiescence.

Five minutes later she was moving a shuttle away from the docks and preparing for her first glimpse of real piracy.

She had never seen the outside of the Jewel of Hades, and of course it was a good deal more pitted and dull than she had imagined. But just around the curve of the jutting hull would be the boarded ship! She would dock and force their locks and be in the thick of battle, watching the pirates, consummate fighters all, best all the thuggish mercenary guards the shipping companies could buy. And surely there would be some fallen weapon…soon she would be proving her-

The shuttle slid silently around the curve of the Jewel, and Marika’s grin faded into incomprehension. The shining blue bows of the freighter were not encrusted with pirate docking pods, but rent by a long trailing gash. An aimless stream of flotsam issued slowly from the tear, and little suited figures swam from the Jewel to the merchant vessel with quick, capable movements. As she sat, without action or understanding, some figures started to thread their way back to the pirate ship, pushing cargo before them. The flotsam, still dissipating slowly into the black, began to reach Marika. Before she could take any action, a small shape floated up and bumped against the shuttle’s main port. It was a boy, no older than Lubi, blood bubbling from his eyes and saliva still boiling fitfully from his gaping mouth.

To be continued