The Space Pirate 1 Read Free Page B

by the sun, Charley made her way out over the hot, shimmering salt pan. On this side of town the salt pans stretched for miles. Right to the distant White Hills. Nothing but flat, crusty plain. Many a traveller had died on these pans only to be stripped naked by the denizens of Sandflower Downs.
    Charley slowed to a walk, her body screaming at her to stop. At that moment she would’ve killed for a drink. The sun of Abeyas tended to leech bodily fluids in minutes. It was the hottest, driest heat in the galaxy. Well, the second hottest. She’d heard the desert planet of Oboyo was pretty hot. But none of that helped her now.
    She dropped to her hands and knees, almost retching with dehydration. How long had she been walking for? Half an hour? Twenty minutes? The heat was quick to strike out here on the pans.
    Charley dared a look over her shoulder. The gangers were still there, unflinching in their black utility suits. Those suits were old and faded, but they still conferred much more sun protection than Charley’s linen shift. Even though the black color was heat-absorbent, they were old trooper suits of the Abeyas Navy. Charley wondered if the temperature controlling diodes were still working. What did it matter? She was thinking like she could loot these fuckers. The reality was there was six of them. How could one silly, silly girl hope to beat them all? With nothing but a pistol that fired blanks? Charley would’ve laughed if her situation wasn’t so desperate. The crusted pan under her hands and feet felt scorching to her pink skin.
    She crawled a few yards further and collapsed in the meager shade of a tumbleweed. The weed was promptly shifted away by a tired gust of wind. Charley groaned. Was the entire universe against her?
    The worst thing was no one would see these gangers rape her savagely. Not out here on the pan. Not that it would matter much. There was no law and order in a place like Sandflower Downs. She’d heard there were some rudimentary laws in the Spacetown, the main port, but that was about it.
    The gangers stood over Charley and unzipped their pants, unwilling to waste time out here in the boiling sun.
    “How fucking dare you,” Charley spat, drawing on her last reserves of strength. “Who do you think you are? I’m one of Boss Pete’s girls.”
    The ruse didn’t work, just as Charley knew it wouldn’t.
    “You mean Boss Pete’s girls make a habit of cowering under hovels and stealing other folks’ weapons?” asked one of the gangers. Charley couldn’t tell which was which when they were standing silhouetted against the sun.
    “Touch me and I’ll fucking kill you,” she spat, inching her way backwards over the hot sand. “I mean it.”
    “I don’t think so,” said a ganger, already preparing himself.
    “You heard the girl,” said a gruff voice from somewhere behind Charley. “Let her be or you feed the salt pans here. Simple.”
    Charley allowed her hoped to lift a little. Was it possible a hero had emerged from nowhere, or was she just delusional from the extreme heat?
    “You’d better back away, old man,” said a ganger. “Six against two ain’t good odds.”
    “They’re better when one of the two is armed to the fucking teeth,” said the stranger. Charley heard a leathery sound and knew the stranger had drawn some kind of weapon.
    The biggest ganger stepped forward, perhaps to prevent the others from fleeing.
    “You don’t scare me, nomad,” he said with forced bravado. “If we rush you at once you ain’t got us all covered.”
    Charley swallowed. These gangers were showing more courage than they normally did. Just her luck. They probably saw an opportunity to have their way with her and loot this guy’s corpse. Such a payload might set them up for weeks.
    Charley risked a look at the stranger. Tall, gaunt, with fancy leather trousers and a gaudy vest. Bony, grizzled face half shrouded in the shadow cast by the wide-brimmed leather hat, tilted fashionably at an