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

He
seemed to be charging forward, straight for the door, posed as though he were
perpetually in the midst of staging an escape. Six-year-old Bee immediately
vomited from sheer terror, making for a short museum trip.
    That was the same day Mother left her in the crowd.
    Bee clapped a hand over her mouth, dropped the datapad onto
her desk with a clatter, and scrambled for the bathroom. Before she could quite
make it to the toilet she puked, and some of it streamed through her fingers
and down her chin. The rest splashed into the water, chunky soup that stuck to
the bowl. Bee dry heaved, but nothing else came up except bad memories.
    She flushed the foul contents down the drain, washed her
hands and face, gargled some water, and dried herself with a hand towel.
Luckily she hadn’t gotten any on her uniform or in her hair. She heard Bill
Silver’s deep baritone on the pad in the other room, but couldn’t make it out
over the noise of the toilet.
    Bee flicked on the lights. She picked up the pad again, but
didn’t bother covering the camera this time; he’d already seen her, what did it
matter? She peered into the small display. Silver had set his pad down on a
metal countertop. He had his back turned to the camera, and seemed to be
engaged in a conversation with himself as he chopped a bulbous green vegetable
of some kind on a cutting board.
    Bee took the opportunity to study the man and his
surroundings. It looked like a ship’s kitchen—from this angle she could see stars
just beyond a round window in the wall. Silver had a white apron tied around
the great girth of his belly, and Bee noted with some curiosity that his left
hand appeared to be bionic. She saw glints of metal shine off the hand in the
artificial light of the kitchen. He used his real hand to cut.
    The kitchen itself was clean and organized, with spices,
herbs, and other ingredients arranged in neat rows behind glass cupboard doors.
Silver lifted the cutting board and slid the edge of his knife across it,
sending the diced vegetables tumbling into a large tub, and glanced over his
shoulder at his datapad’s screen.
    “Ah,” he said. “The bold bounty huntress returns.”
    Bee’s ears burned at the jab. “So, Slack Dog got blown up
for a treasure map,” she snapped, and saw Silver flinch. She regretted her
sharp words.
    “Yes, back to business. The long-lost treasure of the space
pirate—well, I’d better not say it,” he said with a grin and another glance at
the camera. “Of course you must know the story. You can’t live in Overlook City
without hearing about him.”
    So he did know where she was—of course. He probably knew
which hotel Slack Dog would be staying at if they were supposed to meet. The
thought that he knew her location made her uneasy. He’d revealed it on purpose,
she was sure.
    “I grew up there too,” he said, and took on a reflective
tone. “Spent most of my young days on Surface. Best times of my life.”
    “The map,” she said. Her voice was quiet.
    “Of course,” Silver said. “It’s an encoded list of
coordinates. Dreadstar’s crew spent months spreading their stolen goods across
a vast, complicated network of asteroids in the belt. But before they could
finish, some members of the crew mutinied. No one knows which asteroids are
filled with loot and which ones are just rock, ice, and ore. Total chaos out
there. However, we do know the orbits of many asteroids have been, ah, bumped,
shall we say, which is very common, of course, due to illegal mining operations
and the like—unavoidable, unpoliceable, that kind of thing out there—”
    Bee’s heart started pounding as Bill Silver continued to
elaborate on the significance of the map, and she couldn’t concentrate. His
voice droned out and her ears started ringing. Why was she still talking to
him? He was right up there, probably parked at Overlook Station. What if he
already had more men on the way to get this treasure map and he was just
stalling