He was dead. That much was obvious, after the first panic of helplessness had ebbed away. Marika swallowed her retches and looked up, cautiously. He was not a nightmare or a hallucination. He was still there, inert and horrible. She stood up in the cramped space of the shuttle and reached out to put her hand against the cold port, near his little brown hand, twisted awkwardly towards himself on impact.
“What happened?” she said, almost by instinct, and immediately wished that she had not. Her brain was more than willing to leap on the chance to act, to unravel and infer and answer. Her father had done this. It could not have been an accident, either. The men wriggling between the pirate ship and its prey, snug in their space suits, had been ready for the vacuum of space. The people aboard the freighter had not. Her hand shook as she kicked the shuttle a few meters sideways, and confirmed her fears with a look at the long, barbed claws that jutted from the Jewel of Hades and lodged in the scar on the other ship’s side, holding her fast.
Marika collapsed into the pilot’s chair, suddenly noticing how large it was for her. She felt small and laughable and foolish. No wonder the pirates so seldom trained, and yet sustained so few losses in their valiant escapades. No wonder they could barely conceal their amusement at her romantic zeal. No wonder they didn’t want their families to see what they did.
She thought of her father, broad and powerful, cruel and thuggish. She thought of her mother, pretty and capable, materialistic and willfully blind. She whispered a verse of blessing and farewell to the little dead boy and spun away from the silent carnage. Unnoticed, her shuttle faded into the dark.
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