Rig Runner

She broke off, leaving him gasping and dizzy, her golden eyes locked to his.

"What will you do?" Eriksen asked.

"I'll take their shuttle, fly it back to the Black Claw, and then I'll be light years from here before anybody even notices that these guys are missing. Luckily for me, a friend of mine recently taught me how to spacewalk. You can take the freighter to port, but it looks like you'll have a few extra passengers along for the ride. Sorry about that."

"There's a heart of gold under all that brawn and leather," Eriksen murmured, "but don't worry. If anyone asks me what happened, I'll omit the last day or two. Don't want to ruin your reputation with the other pirates."

She snickered and leaned in to kiss his neck, Eriksen's spine arching against the bulkhead as her warm lips pressed against his skin, her sharp teeth pinching him.

"You're a stubborn bastard, Eriksen, you earned this. I just wish I had more time, to convince you to come work for me, and to do other things..."

"Will I see you again?" Eriksen asked, a little more concern creeping into his voice than he had intended.

"You kidding?" Nazka chuckled, "after I put in all this groundwork? You might have waited me out this time, but I have your freighter's serial number logged. Where you dock is a matter of public record. Keep an eye on your proximity radar, because I'm gonna come back to finish the job one day, cabin boy."

"You can try."

"That's the spirit," she laughed, lowering him to the deck and ruffling his hair with her giant hand. "Now I'd better go before one of these guys comes to and decides they want a second crack at me. I'll see you around." She pressed her finger into the bite wound on his shoulder, and he winced, batting her hand away. She grinned down at him, and he couldn't help but return her smile. Yeah, he understood what she was implying. She turned and descended the ramp, stooping for a moment to pick up her helmet and securing it to her suit with a hiss as she crossed the bay towards the force field.

"Hey Nazka," he called after her, and she stopped to look back at him. "I'd be your hostage any time."

He couldn't see her expression beneath her helmet, but he liked to think that she was smiling. With that, she marched through the force field and vanished under the hull.

After a couple of minutes, he felt the rumble of the PDF shuttle uncoupling from the freighter, and he stepped out of the troop bay, rushing over to the nearest militiaman and taking a knee beside him.

"Hey, hey buddy, you okay?"

The man was clutching his chest, his pressure suit dented inward and cracked open like an eggshell, but he was conscious and responsive.

"Well I ain't dead yet if that's what you mean, but I sure as hell ain't okay."

The man who had been standing with his hands up in surrender came jogging over, standing nervously beside the downed PDF soldier, who shot him a furious look.

"What the fuck Steve, you didn't even try. That's desertion or dereliction of fuckin' duty, or-" He coughed into his hand, then waved away the nervous soldier. "Fuck it, go see to Harry, and I think Murray needs a change of fuckin' briefs." The prone man, who must have been the squad leader, turned his attention back to Eriksen.

"Was that thing waiting for you when you landed? Have you been stuck on this ship, alone with that alien since you arrived in the system?" Eriksen nodded, and the soldier reached up to pat him on the arm with his gloved hand as if to reassure him. "You must have gone through some shit. I'd heard stories, but I couldn't have imagined that Borealans could move like that. You got cuts and bruises all over you, yet the freighter is still here, and all of your cargo is still hitched. You must have put up one hell of a fight."

"Yeah, I'm sure I'll have time to tell you all about it, she took your shuttle."

"Fuckin' criminals getting away clean, that's just salt in the wound."

"Hey, we're all alive...more or less. That's a pretty favorable outcome. She's like six hundred pounds, and she set this whole thing up so that you couldn't use your rifles. There's not much you could have done."

"At least we chased her off," the PDF soldier wheezed. "Who knows what might've happened to you or your ship if we had taken a day longer to respond."

"Yeah, you really saved my skin," Eriksen said with a smile that wasn't wholly sincere. He felt sorry for the poor guys, maybe playing up the liberated hostage would make them feel a little better about getting their asses so thoroughly kicked. "Can you walk?"

The squad leader nodded, and Eriksen took his hand, helping him to his feet. The others were picking themselves up too, none of them seemed to have been seriously injured in the altercation. They clustered around their squad leader as he slung an arm over Eriksen's shoulders for support.

"Guess we get a few days off," he said, "it'll take us a while to slowboat to the inner system."

"I got plenty of food," Eriksen volunteered, "let me cook you guys up something to eat. A hot meal is the least I can do to thank you, and there are free cabins with beds. You may have to rotate though."

"Better than a hard rack and an MRE," one of them added, leading the pack as they stumbled towards the hab module. Eriksen helped the squad leader to a bed and then made his way towards the cockpit, keying in the code to unlock the door. It opened with a whoosh of air, and he stepped inside. There was something almost melancholic about finally setting foot in the locked room again. This had been the only thing standing between him and certain death at first, but it had also been what had kept her here for so long, what had given them the time to make their connection and discover their chemistry.

He sat down at the main console and keyed in a burn that would take the vessel towards the inner system, the flight computer automatically compensating for the missing engines, displaying a curved line on a two-dimensional representation of the system and its planetary bodies that led to the colony. He was distracted by a blinking light to his right, indicating that he had an unread hail. Odd, the PDF Warden had hailed him, but those messages should have been marked as read when he had accessed them on the touch panel in the hallway. He navigated to his inbox and saw a new message, his heart skipping as he opened it.

A pixellated image of Nazka appeared on the screen, and he glanced behind him hurriedly to make sure that none of the PDF were hovering over his shoulder. He hit play and watched the short video message spring to life.

"Hey, Eriksen. I'm about to jump out of the system, thought I'd leave you one last calling card before I have to split. You fucked up my whole operation, spaced my crew and cost me more money than you'll probably make in your lifetime, but that was the most fun I've had in a long while. Remember kid, you can run, but you can't hide. I got your serial number, and you got mine." She gestured to her neck with her clawed finger, and Eriksen rubbed his healing scar, feeling the depressions where her teeth had marked him and smiling to himself. "Enjoy your freedom while you can, because I'll be back. Next time you won't get off so easy. Black Claw out."

The message ended, and he filed it away for later viewing, watching the stars twinkle out of the forward viewport. The biggest downside of this job was that he was always moving around, he never stayed in one place long enough to make any real connections with anyone. He had been lonely for longer than he cared to admit. But he had made that connection with Nazka, and now she would be tracking him down wherever he went, chasing him across the cosmos whenever the mood took her. Maybe she'd board him again the next time they met, or maybe she'd find out where he was docked and pull him aside in a bar. He had no way of knowing, and that was exactly the way that he wanted it.

THE END