Read The Star Pirate's Folly for Free Online

“G’head,
take a bite.”
    “Oh, it’s just I’ve never seen
these before. We do everything in credits here. Where are they from?” she
asked.
    “Past the belt,” he said, and
tossed another two coins down. “That’s for you, darlin’. Lemme know if you see
any spacefarin’ types come in—anyone looks like they ain’t from the Core
somewhere. Be a couple more in it for you tonight.”
    She nodded and pocketed the coins
but didn’t ask him to elaborate. Slack Dog stumbled out of the bar. Bee tried
to ask if he wanted his food brought up to his room, but her efforts proved
futile—he moved with the determined, wayward gait of a drunkard on his way to
bed. She’d just bring it up to him when it was ready. That way she could just
leave it at his door if he didn’t answer.
    “Order up!” came a shout from Gunther
in the kitchen.
    Bee pushed the door behind the bar
open, grabbed the two plates of food she had ordered for Slack Dog, and placed
them on a wheeled trolley. She took two chrome lids and covered the plates.
Time for room service.
    “Hey Gunther,” she called to the
chef. “I’m gonna take this up to 302. Bar’s empty.”
    Gunther gave an unintelligible
yell of confirmation.
    After a brief elevator ride, Bee
arrived on the third floor and pushed the trolley out in front of her toward
room 302. The door was already open. Bee tapped a knuckle against it, peeked
inside.
    “Mister, uh—Slack Dog?” she said.
    No answer.
    As she edged into the room she
heard him snoring and rolled her eyes. He’d fallen asleep with the door open.
Careless. She wheeled the trolley through the rest of the way. The snoring
emanated from the bathroom—when Bee glanced inside she saw Slack Dog passed out
on the toilet, pants puddled at his feet. His chin rested against his chest,
rising and falling with each breath. Bee
stifled a laugh and whirled out of the room, leaving the trolley behind.
    She shut the door behind her and
nearly plowed into a tall, square-jawed man in the hallway. He wore an
oversized brown trench coat and made no effort to move out of her space. For a
moment she thought she recognized his face. Then the man’s stench reached her
nostrils—stagnant sweat and something like pickled vegetables. A glint of metal
underneath his coat caught her eye—a black armored nullsuit.
    “Can I help you?” she asked,
trying not to breathe. She didn’t think it was possible to stink through a suit
of armor.
    “I’ll bet you can.” The man’s lips
parted in a lecher’s grin, and his beady brown eyes spent too much time looking
her up and down. “Full service, eh?”
    Bee glared and crossed her arms. Spacefarin’
types , Slack Dog had said. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She
wished she still had the safety of the locked door between them. She’d dealt
with men like this before in her old life—but she’d stopped carrying Janey’s
knife during her shifts a long time ago.
    “This room’s occupied,” she said.
    “Oh, I was just looking for
something to eat,” he said. He leaned closer to her and drew in a deep breath
through his nose as he put his arm out to block her in. “I smelled something
delicious and savory. You wouldn’t know where I could find something like that,
would you?”
    Bee gagged as he leaned closer,
waving his stink away from her face as she backed away as much as she could.
The muscles in her gut clamped tight as she retched and yelled, “Ugh, did you shit
yourself?”
    Caught off guard, he backpedaled
as if she’d struck him. “Wh-what, no?”
    Bee sidestepped out of the
doorway, well out of his reach, thumbed the button for the elevator without
looking, and kept her eyes locked on him. She knew his face. The doors slid
open with a chime.
    The man stood outside Slack Dog’s
room, shaking his head with envy, leering at her chest and legs even in the
more or less formless magenta uniform. Bee committed his face to memory,
searching for defining