“Peter, The Pandora will will arrive in a few minutes. I suggest you prepare, sir.”

    I looked over at my first mate, Zebulin. He was a Sorin, a species most people thought were extinct. His skin was the color of the endless void outside my window, only interrupted by his eyes and hair, which were as white as a supernova. Only one man on my entire ship would dare call me by my actual name, but my first mate and I go way back.

“I’ll be down in a second.”

He nodded and walked out of my quarters, the doors hissing shut behind him. A sly smile graced my lips. Cillion-5 stood outside my window. The gas giant was located in the outskirts of Sector 9 of the Milky Way. It was truly beautiful, a huge swirling mass of blue, purple, and white. Because of its beauty, Cillion-5 is one of the top tourist attraction in the galaxy, millions of people flood here just to get a glimpse of its majesty. Of course, with millions of people come billions of credits, credits the crew and I need to pay back a few unsavory characters. I cracked my neck and turned to my room. I grabbed my pistols and holstered them at my waist; picked up my rifle and slung it over my shoulder. Finally I took my Jolly Roger, a good luck charm I acquired from one of our previous conquests, and lashed it around my waist. I turned to leave as the door hissed open once more. Zebulin stepped in.

“Sir, it is here.”

Walking on the the main deck of my ship, I saw my crew gazing in awe at the sheer size of The Pandora as it dropped out of lightspeed. Looking out the window myself, I had to admit it was impressive. The Pandora was a gamma-class cruise liner, the biggest of the big. It was built to hold nearly an entire city in its bowels. Needless to say, the men were daunted. We’d taken down cruise liners before, but this behemoth was in a class of its own. The Pandora suddenly adjusted course, slowly turning away from our ship. It had finally spotted us.

“Seems they recognize us boys,” I said laughing. “They seem to be expecting a fight. Let’s not disappoint, eh?”

My answer came in a roar of challenge from the crew as they all rushed to their stations.

“Zebulin, Thrain, on me.” I summoned them into the holding bay.

    Thrain was my quartermaster, and also a Troglodan. Troglodans are huge, the smallest I’ve seen being around seven feet tall, the biggest around nine. Thrain was in the middle, probably close to eight feet. Troglodans’ skin is covered with rough scales.Thrain’s dull, red scales cover his whole body, save his beak, which sits where a human’s mouth would be. Let's just say you’ll never catch Thrain, or any other Troglodan, eating anything but meat.

“We’ll be the boarding party. Arm up and meet me at the jumpship in less than five.”

I walked into the jumpship and prepped for launch. Zebulin walked in first, carrying only one thing: his sword. Not just any sword, of course. It was made of voscalt, one of the most durable metals in the galaxy. He’s handy with it too.

Thrain was a completely different story. He strolled in packing a handheld laser cannon, two belts of thermite grenades, and his battle armor, just to show off. I shook my head as I powered up the jumpship.

I tapped on the holographic screen and brought up the main deck. “James! James, you ready?”

A face appeared in the screen. “Aye, Captain. Once you get close, we’ll start the assault.”

“Good man. Okay boys,” I fired up the jumpship, “let’s get her going!”

The ship fired out of the loading bay, and headed toward The Pandora.

As we flew off toward the massive cruise liner, I handed the control over to Zebulin and walked to the peephole in the side of the ship and looked back at my own. It was large, at least when compared to what your average pirate was using. She was about a quarter mile long, using Earth measurements. Her hull was solid black, made of the same stuff as Zebulin’s sword. The only flash of color you could see from the outside was the name. In glowing green letters, plastering the front of the ship: The Kraken. It may have been a bit generic, but I grew up reading old pirate books given to me by my father, so the idea of controlling a mythical beast was awe inspiring. My beauty was loaded with twelve heavy ion cannons on either side, six laser turrets rigged to the upper deck, and tucked below in the bottom decks was my pride and joy: an anti-matter artillery cannon, stripped right off the flagship of the GSF navy. One shot can tear through the hull of even the most heavily armored ship. I smiled thinking about all the times that beautiful weapon had saved the collective ass of me and my crew.

“Peter, The Pandora’s defenses are powering up.”

I turned away from my ship to see what Zebulin was referring to, and chuckled softly. This was gonna be cake.The Pandora was obviously no stranger to pirate raids, and as such, the second it saw use, all its bays opened, spewing out a swarm of gunships. I glanced back at The Kraken.

“Gentlemen, enjoy the lightshow.”

As if she could hear me, my baby opened fire. Bolts of green energy slammed into the fighters, disintegrating them into space dust.

“There,” Zebulin said, pointing to a small cargo dock near the bottom of the ship. “We can slip right in.”

“Sounds good. Take us in.”

We flew our jumpship right into the open bay and opened fire with the two mounted energy turrets on either side of the ship, just to clear out any security bots in the hanger. We landed the ship and all hopped off, heading toward the nearest door. It took a few tries for me to guess the key code, but cruise ships are very lazy when it comes to their security. They rely too much on their outer defenses. As such, all cruise liner companies (The Pandora belonging to Centurian Cruises) only use four different codes for most doors. We were soon heading through the maintenance zone of the ship. 

We had just turned the corner when a squad of security bots opened fire from down the hall. Zebulin and I ducked back into the hall we came from, and Thrain activated his armor’s personal deflector shield, the oncoming hail of lasers fizzled into nothingness as they hit it. Thrain then powered up his laser cannon and sent a red beam of death down the hall, eviscerating the security bots in a matter of seconds. We walked over the melted bodies of the security bots and continued into the residential decks of The Pandora.

Up here they use human guards, for reasons incomprehensible to me. I think it has something to do with the bots scaring people, which I never understood. The cook back on The Kraken is a android, and he’s always good for a joke. I guess it’s a pleasing aesthetic choice, but from a security perspective it’s a horrible idea. With a security bot, normal energy blasts won’t stop it. It takes some heavy weaponry, such as Thrain’s lovely laser cannon, to put them down. Human guards, however, are soft and fleshy. And my two pistols excel at making soft and fleshy, burnt and dead, which was exactly what any of the guards we encountered became.

It wasn’t long before we came across a credit station. The crown jewel of corporate stupidity is in these small little panels. As an extra option on most high end cruise ships, such as The Pandora, some idiotic but well meaning soul invented the credit pool. Basically, the credit pool is a system in which the richest and laziest bastards aboard the ship can store their credits inside a shared credit pool. This allows them to access their funds from anywhere on the ship without having to carry around their personal credit cards. It also allows me to swipe millions of credits in one fell swoop, which I like.

“Zeb, give me Vinny.”

I reached my hand out as Zebulin placed a small circular device in my hand. I attached Vinny to the fingerprint scanner on the panel. What Vinny does is first search the ship's database to find the fingerprint of every single user that signed in for the credit pool. Fingerprints are required to be run in the system upon boarding. He then copies every single fingerprint on to the scanner, giving us access to all of the credits in the pool. Of course there are firewalls and security and hundreds if not thousands of different passwords that are required, but Vinny is an expert in code breaking. In about ten minutes we had millions of credits flowing into our account back aboard The Kraken.

“What is the take so far Peter?”

“Fifty-seven million and still coming Zeb.”

Zebulin nodded and went back to scanning the hallways. Once I heard him growl, I knew we had trouble on our hands.

“Ten guards heading straight for us. Orders Captain?”

I looked up at him, his hand already at the hilt of his sword. I grabbed Vinny and stood. “Cover us then catch up when you can.”

“Understood.”

With that, Thrain and I took off down the hallway, heading away from the oncoming group of guards. As the were about to open fire, Zebulin rolled out of cover and streaked toward them like a black meteor. Before they even had a chance to react, his blade was arcing out of its scabbard and cleaving straight through on of the guards. By the time they started firing, three of them were already dead, either decapitated or in two pieces. Zebulin was like a demon, leaping over heads only to cut them off with a lethal backslash. His body and blade were a blur, and anything that got close was torn asunder. It only took seconds until he was standing alone among a pile of assorted bodies. By the time we turned the corner into the next hall, he was with us.

We ran into a lone guard near the main elevator. His life was quickly, and brutally, ended. Thrain clamped his beak around the man’s head and thrashed his limp from around before flinging the corpse into the wall, denting the metal. We stepped into the main elevator and started heading down, back toward maintenance. I glanced down at a credit panel that was conveniently placed inside the elevator. I smiled. Vinny wasn’t quite done.

“Peter,” Zebulin said, staring out the glass elevator. “Look.”

I turned away from the panel and my mouth dropped. The glass back of the elevator revealed the central hold of the ship. The area strewn in front of us was massive. There were hundreds of stories below us, and still hundreds above, all circled around a gargantuan open space that could have held my ship four times over. Skywalks criss-crossed the entire area. Dozens of different shops, restaurants, and other amenities lined the multiple decks. The entrance to a zoo was a few dozen decks above use, and a waterpark a few hundred under. The sheer scale of it was breathtaking.

“Just think,” I said, turning away from the panorama. “A few more jobs like this, and we’re set.”

Zebulin nodded and turned away from the beauty of the future as well. Thrain continued staring, almost incomprehensibly, until the view was cut off by a cold, gray wall, to which he responded to by turning his back to it, a confused, almost heartbroken look adorning his face. I felt sorry for him, but my sympathy was lessened by the small bits of flesh still hanging from his beak. I patted him on the shoulder.

“Head up Thrain. We’re almost home.”

“Yes Thrain,” Zebulin said, an encouraging smile gracing his face. “Almost home.”

He looked at us and nodded. The doors of the elevator opened to reveal our jumpship still intact. We started toward it, only to begin running once one of the hanger’s doors opened and let out a flow of security bots.

“Zeb, Thrain, get to ship and fire her up, I’ll cover you.” I unslung my rifle from my shoulder and started firing bolts of concentrated plasma into the endless tide of security. I heard the ship’s engines kick in as I slowly backed up the entrance ramp, keeping up fire and side-stepping any blasts that got near me. That was, until I heard the doors on the other side of the hanger hiss open. What happened next was a blur.

“Peter!” Zebulin screamed. I felt his hand grab the back of my coat as he threw me back into the jumpship as a blast sailed right through where my chest had been a second ago. He started blocking the hail of plasma blasts that streaked toward him. I slammed against the floor, and sat up just in time to see a bolt of plasma burn a hole through my best friend’s chest.

“Zebulin!” I roared “You robot bastards! I’ll kill you!”

Thrain grabbed my shoulder before I did anything stupid. He started pulling me toward the c***pit as Zebulin expired on the boarding ramp.

“Let go of me! That’s an order!”

Thrain shook his head as he pressed the button to close the hatch. The boarding ramp slide back into the ship, taking Zebulin with it. Thrain let go of me and flew us out of the hanger as I rushed to Zebulin’s side. He was gone.

We didn’t encounter any resistance once we were out the ship. Apparently that had been their final push. Thrain didn’t dare make a move to comfort me, a skill he learned the last time one of my crewmen died. We docked in The Kraken’s loading bay. I carried Zebulin’s body back to his quarters before dragging myself to the bridge.   

The doors hissed open as we walked in. My crew turned to me, expectant looks on their faces.

“James.”

“Aye, Captain?”

“Fire up the anti-matter cannon.”

He seemed a bit taken aback,

“But Captain, shouldn’t we salvage the ship? Think about all the--”

“James, the ship burns.”

He knew better than to argue with me. I walked over to one of the consoles and remotely connected to Vinny, who I had left aboard the elevator. He had just finished draining the credit pool. Seventeen point three seven billion credits. Throughout our careers, Zeb and I always talked about who’s bounty was higher. Zebulin always joked I could never beat him because he was priceless. Only now do I realize he was right. In a few minutes the cannon was ready.

“Sir,” James said, “shall we fire?”

“Not yet.” I said, sitting in my chair at the center of the bridge, a shadowed look adoring my face. “Give them fifteen minutes.”

As the crew looked on, The Pandora’s lifeboats detached and launched off, heading toward Jestizon, the nearest spaceport. Once the last lifeboat was gone, I turned to James and nodded. He activated the firing sequence.

The bottom of the ship slowly slide open as the massive cannon slowly crept out. Once it was locked in place, it began charging. Streaks of purple energy laced the barrel of the cannon, and The Kraken itself shuddered as it fired. For a few moments there was nothing. Then The Pandora’s starboard side disappeared, followed quickly by the rest of the ship as the anti-matter punched through the hull and ate away everything it came into contact with. I stood.

“Gentlemen, we have a burial to complete.”

In a few minutes we were all standing in one of the firing decks, next to one of the ion cannons. Zebulin was laid, with his hands clutching his sword, inside his cryosleep tube. We all have one for this reason. I placed my foot on the bottom of the tube and pushed. The tube slid out the ship and started peacefully floating away from the ship, toward Cillion 5. We all waited for what seemed like hours, watching it float further and further into the distance. I glanced over at Thrain and nodded. He returned the nod and activated the ion cannon. It fired a green bolt that engulfed the cryotube, leaving nothing in its place. After that, the crew slowly trickled out the deck. Soon it was just me. I stayed there for quite some time. 
The Kraken turned away from Cillion-5 and took off, heading to our next conquest.