Starcutter - 1. Chapter 1

When a ship captain comes in to buy a new crew member, the slave owners smile and try to make a sale. It's just good business. When a famous and wealthy captain comes in, they try even harder, and the captains know this and hold out for the best price. When this captain walks into the crew pens, no one in their right mind wants to make him angry.

The slave master wrung his hands and started to sweat as soon as he saw the notorious captain. Few knew his face for few ever looked at it long enough for fear that he would take it as a challenge and kill them for such nonsense. It was his long black coat, the old fashioned tricorn with bones sewn into the hem, the thundering of his walk, and the broad shoulders too large for any one man that everyone knew. “Honored Captain...h...how may I help you? Please don't kill me.” His voice broke in fear.

“I need three slaves. Two for work and one for...pleasure.” The captain's voice was so much in contrast to his fearsome exterior. It was velvet, a gentle caress to the ears. Especially when he said the word pleasure.

“Hard or skilled labor?”

“Hard labor. A male and female. I don't care the species, they just need to be strong and work long hours. I...Get in here now!” the captain raged, his voice sounding like cannon fire and the deadly explosions at the end. The slaver cringed, thinking he was going to be killed, but he noticed the captain was looking outside of his shop.

A lone young man entered. He was dressed in a similar attire to the captain, only instead of towering like a giant boulder, he walked and looked like the boy next door forced to into some odd uniform. Sandy red hair, a smattering of freckles across his nose, honest and open eyes the color of beryls dipped in liquid diamonds. His face, though, was a neutral mask of apathy. “Pardon me, Captain, but you did say I was to go where I pleased. It does not please me to be in here.” The slavers face went white. The boy would be killed.

But the captain just chuckled. “Ah. Very well this won't take long and then you may be about your business.” His voice had returned to the courtly tones as he turned back to the slaver. “I trust you will not waste my time in choosing my workers. You may send out the entertainment for viewing. You have five minutes.” The slaver bowed out and ran.

“Do you really like that reaction, Captain?”

“It serves its purpose. Gets things done faster. I do wish you try for something other than bored. Maybe challenge a person to a duel because they looked at you strangely.”

“The only reason they would do that is because I look ridiculous in this coat.” The Captain slowly turned his head, but the other just gazed on without fear.

“Come to think of it, yes you do. You don't have the shoulders for it.”

“Glad you finally noticed that, Captain.” His tone was tight, controlled, and very surly.

“You're dangerously close to being disciplined. What has your temper up?” The captain knew this lad had developed a temper, but a very long fuse with some odd things that would ignite it. The only thing is the captain did not know what they were.

“As I stated, I dislike being here at all. You know my views on slavery.” His eyes narrowed dangerously when the captain laughed. “I would kindly ask you not to laugh...Captain.”

“Oh you are a touchy one these past few months. Very well, by my word as Captain, after this I shall not ask you to enter a slave depot without dire need.” The lad nodded. He knew that, once given, his word was solid. Too many people had learned the hard way that when he said something, he would stop at nothing until his had made good on his word. More than a dozen ships had been blasted from the skies because he said he would do it.

“Thank you. I apologize for my tone. It has been...trying...these past few months.” The captain nodded in agreement. Both looked to different parts of the show room, their minds turned inward.

Neither knew what to do with each other, truth be told. The captain had been told that he was to take on this boy. He would have outright refused had it not been in a legal document saying he must. While he would break any law to do as he said, he never said he would not take the boy...he didn't know he existed. Yet when he was told to pick him up as Orbital Station Centauri just outside of the asteroid belt six months ago, he went., and when he saw the lad, there was no room for doubt. He never knew he had a son. He bedded many women, so many that he didn't even bother to count or ask their names any more. This was the first time one of the many women ended up pregnant and dying, leaving him to take the boy on. He didn't know how to be a father and knew he was doing a piss poor job of it. He didn't even remember being sixteen; it was forty-some years ago.

For the lad, he knew exactly who his father was and hated it. His mother made no bones about it. She had slept with him to gain prestige among the other ladies, getting with child so she could get free of the guild and not have to sell herself any more. Whether the feared Captain cared was never the case. He had given her one night of passion and a child. With that child came her life free of being a whore.

“My child, you are my saving grace,” she would always say. She told him a few years ago the circumstances she had been, and how he had been the only way to leave them. “Do not think I did it to simply save myself. I am not a young woman, and I wanted a child. Someone I can take care of and not in the worst ways.” That was his mom. She was blunt and forward and crass at times. What would one expect from a ring colony whore? Not class. But she had enough tact to censor herself.

She also had a skill at cooking. Not too long after being let go from the guild she was hired on as a cook/mistress for a moderately wealthy business owner. She was given food, shelter, an honest wage, and if he asked for a bit extra now and then, she didn't care. He was handsome enough and treated her well and after two years they wed. She had become the type of woman she always dreamed of. Honest, free, and respectable.

She got sick. It was something she picked up from her past. Something she didn't know she had until it was too late. So her son and husband watched her waste away. The business man, the one whom the lad called father, found his presence to painful. He had his mother's eyes. It was only a few months until the boy turned sixteen and could be sent off to learn a trade, to leave the man to his grief, but her Will said he would be sent to his biological father. The day he came of age he was ordered to pack and was sent to OSC to learn his trade from his real father. A man he had never met. A man feared by many. A man who knew nothing about him or how to raise him.

Both were jostled from their reverie as the slaver came hustling back in with two slaves. One was a Spyral, a six armed female with tremendous strength for her willowy frame. The other was a massively built but stout Urthan, a feline halfbreed built more for mine work than starship crew. “Your workers, Honored Captain.” The man stood and looked them over, nodding that he was pleased.

“Good. You have not let me down with my workers.” The slaver smiled, his eyes full of relief that he would live another day.

“And for your viewing pleasure.” He clapped once.

All manner of slaves came out. Lovely, exotic, all shapes and colors and races. Males, females, ambiguous, sexless...everything a person could choose from. Each one was trying to look the best that they could. Females, and a few males, were trying to be either coy and flirtatious or were brazenly showing off what they had to offer. Some were obviously for specific types of entertainment as one sexless being with stunning golden skin was VERY limber. “I do hope they meet your approval.”

The Captain turned and sat. “It is not my approval. Take your pick,” he said to his son, although few would ever make the connection.

“Me? Captain, you know my views on slavery.”

“Yes, I also know you need a companion.” The look on the lad's handsome face told it all. He was lonely. Very lonely. On a ship of hundreds he had no friends and still did not trust or even like his father.

“So you're buying me one?” he murmured. It was, at heart, a very kind gesture, but like all things so far, it was done very poorly. Yet as he looked over the crowd whose attention was now on him, he realized he could give one of them a chance at something different. Could he be a saving grace for someone else? He squared his shoulder and even the captain was impressed. He looked like he was in charge, like he did this every day. He walked up and down the line, looking over every person there. Even overlooking ones on purpose. Those were the ones who wished to be concubines. Seeing that those were being passed up, a few switched up their game and tried for some other role.

It wasn't until he came to a rather small Cana, a bird hybrid, that he stopped and looked down at it. It was pathetic looking. The feathers were dirty and unkempt. There were spots where feathers were missing. A mere four feet tall, the male was small. It was also bound in chains and a collar. The lad almost walked on until he caught a look into the eyes of the Cana. They were a deep violet, almost the purple of the Royal House, and so full of hatred and rage...and fear. “How many times?” he asked the slaver.

“Four.” Four times he had been returned to the pens. This was his literal last chance to get bought and he knew it. If he was not bought within a year he would be killed.

“Don't do me any favors, Captain's Boy,” the Cana said for his ears only. That voice was melodious and lovely as all Cana voices were, but his tone was acid and bitter. He would rather die than be bought and put in a cage. Again.

“What would you do if the Captain came at you with a sword?” he asked loud enough for all to hear.

“Scratch his eyes out.” The response made the slaver reach for his whip, but the Captain just laughed. Yet there was an edge because the nails on the end of a Cana's three fingers and thumb were more like talons found on bird of prey. With the right timing, he could hurt someone. Which is why he was bound in chains.

Their eyes were locked, each one searching the other for any sign of...something. “I'll take him.” The lad looked at the slaver, nodded, and turned to leave. “Have him delivered to the ship.”

“Sir...what name shall I register him to?”

The lad stopped just outside of the shop and looked over his shoulder. “Gabriel of the Starcutter.”