The Star Pirate's Folly by James Hanlon Read Free Book Online Page A

finger over
the “end” button, but didn’t hang up.
    “Well, you’re not Slack Dog,” he said. “You’re far
too pretty.”
    So he had at least gotten a look at her. Bee considered
ending the call. She was still wearing her uniform—the gaudy dark magenta
outfit was unmistakably that of a hotel employee, and it even had her name on
it. She had no idea who the guy was, or what connection he had to Slack Dog,
but she didn’t want him to know anything more about her than he did already.
    “Who are you?” Bee asked.
    “An old friend of his,” he said. “And you?”
    “No one. I’m sorry to tell you this, but he was the one
killed in the explosion. I guess this is his pad—I found it, I didn’t steal it
or anything. I was going to return it.”
    Silver shook his head. “I called as soon as I heard about
the bombing. Damn shame. He was a decent man.”
    “What was he doing here?”
    Bill frowned. “Why so interested?”
    She didn't want to reveal that she worked at the hotel.
Between her face and her job, he'd be able to find out who she was for sure.
She considered hanging up. Whoever the guy was, it wasn't her business. She
could feel the silence after his question growing, and a flutter of panic
brought the first thing that came to mind tumbling out of her mouth.
    “I’m a bounty hunter,” she blurted. “Looking for Jensen
Lee.”
    Bee had to cover the speaker as the man howled with
laughter. Embarrassed, she felt her cheeks flush. Her mouth had a way of
working on its own when she was flustered. The man wiped tears from the crows’
feet at the corners of his eyes as he shook with mirth.
    “Goodbye,” she said, and went to end the call.
    “Wait, wait,” the man said, still chuckling. “Please, I’m
sorry. I’m a very rude man. Name’s Bill Silver.”
    “I’m not telling you mine,” she said. “Now tell me what’s
going on. Why was Slack Dog killed?”
    Silver hesitated for a moment. He looked deep into the
camera, and even though she knew he couldn’t see her, she understood she was
being assessed somehow. Calculated. Again she felt the urge to remove herself
from the situation, but she didn't hang up.
    “He had something very valuable,” Silver said.
    “What was it?”
    “A map.”
    “A map of what?”
    “Buried treasure,” he said with an adventurous growl.
    Bee snorted. “Really.”
    “I’m sure you’ve heard of Dreadstar.”
    “Dreadstar,” Bee said. The name brought a bad taste into her
mouth.
    The body of the ruthless space pirate Dreadstar was on
display at the public museum in Overlook City. She only saw it once as a child,
accidentally. Back when everything was still normal. Mother didn’t know what
they were walking into.
    The image flashed in her mind. Every visible inch of his
pale body was covered with tiny black numbers in intricate patterns—his
infamous tattoos, the still-unbroken code that hid the location of his treasure
hoard. The Governor of Overlook had ordered his corpse to be put on display at
the museum and contorted into a snarling battle pose like some kind of morbid action
figure. He held a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other, his bionic eye
still blazing with a red light—his namesake. Everyone in the city had seen him
at least once.
    People said Dreadstar was a code breaker for Earth’s
Interstellar Fleet who got stranded when the gates went down during the war.
His vessel was forced into hiding in the asteroid belt Styx, where he went mad
and murdered the entire crew before piloting the ship, alone, into pirate
territory. No one knows how exactly he brought the pirate clans under his heel,
but when they joined forces they claimed nearly the whole system as their
territory. It took more than a decade for the Core planets to bring him down
and contain the pirate fleets within the asteroid belt.
    Dreadstar’s body was mounted in a display case just inside
the museum’s front doors. It was the first thing Bee saw after she walked in.