“You three, with me,” Monique said, picking out a trio of pirates from the boarding party. “Don’t worry about looting right now. Our primary mission is to capture or kill anyone that gets in our way. Also, do your best to leave the ship intact. Jean wants to add this beauty to our fleet, and we can’t do that if it's on fire.”
It was a reiteration of what she said to the boarding party before crossing the airlock, but when dealing with a group of pirates that had already lost their home, family, and world, it was best to err on the side of caution. Their lives were hanging by a thread, and each of them knew that if Narax was discovered, it wouldn't just be a few people who would die in retribution for what they had done. When faced with a realization like that, most simply didn’t care enough to take any level of safety seriously.
She checked a tablet built into the forearm of her exoskeleton as they ran along the passageways and grinned. A significant part of her wanted to stop and clear every room as she passed—building tension and fostering fear in the hearts of her targets—but her part of the job required that she hunt and kill the current captain of this ship.
Monique spun as they came to an intersection, parrying the tip of a stinger that sought her abdomen. The Scaladorian sailor had tried to hide his presence from her, but a lifetime of silence taught her to be vigilant to compensate for her lack of hearing. There wasn’t time to play games. Instead of offering this man a chance to prove his perceived superiority, she drove the tip of her stinger through joints in his chitin and thumbed the vibration up to one hundred percent.
The sailor screamed in pain as the frequency echoed through his body, disrupting the function of his heart and other organs. Not slowing their advance, Monique’s pirates kept moving while Jean’s right hand dealt with the problem. She growled, ripping the weapon to either side to shred the Scaladorian’s internal organs before following her team.
“Monique, we’ve found their captain.” A pirate called from the other room.
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She rolled her head, cracked her neck, and picked up the stinger her attacker dropped when he died without offering a proper fight. They would spend the next several hours rooting out hidden sailors to claim the ship in the name of Jean, but her part was almost over. It was almost unfair. Between the maps provided by Mik’t, and her crew’s efficiency at killing Scalador, limiting her to one or two fights was incredibly taunting.
The tall woman knew exactly who should pay for such an offense.
“Hello Captain, it is time for you to earn your ship, your keep, or your death. Which will be your prize? Only you can decide.” She said through her translator as she walked in to find the sailor cowering in the center of the room. Monique snapped her fingers at a sailor by the wall. “You there, give the former captain a blade. If I win, he dies. If he wins, the humans leave this ship, taking the cargo but leaving their lives intact. But if we draw, then you join Jean and swear eternal loyalty to his cause.”
The pirate threw a stinger at the deck, planting it in the center of the room less than a meter from the captain. He fumbled for the weapon and clambered to his feet, the point of the loaned stinger trembling as he shook with fear. In the many years since he’d risen to the rank of captain, he hadn’t wielded a blade of his own; there had always been others to fight for him.
Monique waited, the tip of her blade resting on the deck without care as she watched her opponent gather the courage to attack. With her free hand, she reached up and pulled the magnets from her hearing implants, dropping her into a world of silence—a world of significantly less distraction. As she closed her eyes to revel in the raging river of silent white noise, the captain struck.
She felt it when he moved, the deck beneath her feet vibrating ever so slightly as he stepped toward her. The swords woman snapped her eyes open and parried a string of clumsy attacks, giving the captain every chance she could. A fight was about more than simple life and death, it was about honoring your opponent in the heat of battle. Each swing of his weapon became more and more wild, what little discipline he had quickly replaced by desperation.
It was time to end this torture. Monique stepped inside his guard, interrupting his swing as she stabbed, driving the point of her stinger between his mandibles and through the back of his head. She ripped the back out, the ichor-stained blade dripping as the captain slumped to the deck.
