12. Pirate King

The old battlecruiser was dank. It groaned and burbled around them as Ophion spoke. Pirates had appeared as they made their way to the bridge, but Ophion dispatched each of them instantly before resuming his story. Auren watched, horrified, as the invisible lizard slashed and splattered its foes, realizing how easily he could've killed them back on the yacht.

The hallway ahead abruptly ended in bulwark doors, and Ophion bashed against them furiously, his claws grating terribly against the surface as he tried to pry them open. He'd fallen silent after finishing his story.

"Allow me, dear friend," Lupo said.

He slid alongside the lizard and engaged the door's control panel, pulling up command displays and overriding its lock mechanism in a few deft keystrokes. The door slid open. After the lizard's tale he'd expected something hideous within—but the reality was far worse than what his imagination had conjured.

The battle cruiser's bridge was vast, designed to provide a commanding view of a full-scale planetary invasion. Dozens of workstations were scattered about its expanse, but few were occupied. A cadre of pirates leveled their weapons at the interlopers as they entered the bridge, and in the middle of it all, to Auren's shock and horror, was the unmistakable form of the Pirate King.

The cyborg was suspended in the bridge's center, held up by cables and rigging. Its spidery appendages glittered with titanium menace. The human head fixed atop the monstrous amalgam of legs was as aged as the battle cruiser itself. The cyborg smirked as they entered, lowering itself to the ground and disentangling from the web of cables. The sight of it was sickening.

"You're still up to your games, are you, Ophion?" the King asked, looking around comically as though he couldn't fathom where Ophion might be.

He fired a few plasma bolts here and there. One fell too close to Auren for comfort. They left molten scars where they struck and melted the floor cladding.

"And you two little pretties… just what are you?" the King asked.

He skittered this way and that along his platform at the center of the bridge, prodding the air with a pointed leg, hoping to reveal the still-cloaked Ophion.

"Our ship's sensors say you're not human. Expensive equipment you've brought me. Thank you. And you've even returned my ship. Now if you'll all just die, we'll be good and even!" The mad creature giggled.

Lupo and Auren dove behind the nearest workstation as shots flared out from the waiting guard.

"Careful!" Lupo screamed.

"And now, it would seem I have caught you out," Ophion's voice lashed.

Auren peered from around the desk. He could barely see Ophion, who had removed his mantle and become visible right behind the spider. The enormous lizard's tail whipped out and struck the spider's face so hard it was permanently deformed. Crimson blood sprayed across the nearest of the pirate crew.

The shots were wild and frantic, blasting holes in the walls and destroying seemingly vital equipment across the bridge. None of them appeared to land. And to Auren's amazement, Ophion didn't stop. He grabbed the man-spider by its legs with a single clawed hand.

"Weak is the predator that grows fat and lazy," the lizard hissed.

He ripped off one of the King's many legs.

"I should have told you that The Game isn't won with cheap tricks, abomination," Ophion boomed.

But the spider fought back fiercely, stabbing Ophion with one of his forearms and impaling him in the shoulder with another. He giggled maniacally as the giant lizard began to stumble around, disoriented. The stabbing continued, as did the giggling.

Auren glanced nervously at Lupo, who gave him a little nod before flipping the safety on his Keth gun and opening fire on the pirates. A sickly green light beamed out of the weapon, and the first pirate it illuminated screamed in horror as he disintegrated where it lanced across his stomach, slicing him messily in two. A sour and metallic smell reached Auren's nose, and it took all of his willpower to aim the weapon at the next pirate and fire. Within seconds, there was blood and dismembered body parts everywhere, not a pirate left standing. Auren realized with horror that this was the fate of his fellow soldiers on Vesperion. The Keth weapons were truly monstrous.

"Stabby-stabby-stab-stab!" the Pirate King squealed.

He'd somehow crawled onto Ophion's shoulders and was using his forelimbs to inflict massive damage to the lizard's upper body.

Ophion hissed, grabbing the cyborg with a giant taloned hand and ripping off one, then another, and another of his limbs. He roared into the face of the aberration, looking at him with total disgust before hurling him against the bridge's viewing window, where his irreparably damaged form struck with a dull thud before tumbling pitiably to the ground. The King begged incoherently for mercy as he dragged himself across the floor with his sole remaining forelimb, the ooze of his hydraulics smearing and bubbling out from his damaged frame, staining the ground.

"Help… me…" the King moaned.

But his crew were all dead. There was no help coming. Auren watched in horror as the lizard advanced on the limbless creature squirming about on the floor. Ophion stumbled toward him, uncharacteristically sluggish.

"Your Game is over," Ophion hissed groggily.

He swayed from side to side, and Auren worried he'd collapse or worse.

"I will permit you mercy you don't deserve," the lizard said hoarsely.

The King screamed as Ophion raised a giant, taloned foot and smashed the pirate's skull into mush, sending bits of him splattering across the ancient battle cruiser. Ophion stumbled, tried to brace himself against a console, and then crashed to the ground. Auren puked for the third time that day, regretting that some aspects of being alive had been simulated so accurately in his new body. Lupo steadied him.

"We're going to be okay, but we need to get out of here; there are undoubtedly more pirates on board. Hurry, help me with Ophion," Lupo cried.

He ran to the lizard. But Auren was fighting the urge to fire the Keth gun at the alien and end this all then and there—and yet when he reflected on the story the lizard had told, it was harder to hate him as entirely as he once had.

Auren let the urge go, and stepped over the Pirate King's corpse, knelt on the floor beside Lupo, and stared at Ophion's giant, unconscious form.

"Is he alive?" Auren grimaced. Ophion's scaled flesh was covered in smears and rivulets of purple-blue blood.

"I… think so. Grab his mantle," Lupo ordered. "I think I can lift him alone."

Auren eyed the doorway to the bridge uneasily as Lupo struggled to rise with Ophion slung limply over his shoulder. He picked up the mantle.

"Quick, before more of them come barreling in to investigate the noise!" Lupo urged.

At each turn Auren expected conflict. But to his astonishment, their transit went uncontested, and he was grateful not to have to put the vile weapon he held limply in one hand to use. The hanger bay was still empty when they reached it. It was also still littered with the corpses of their welcoming party. Auren did his best not to look at the many puddles of goo as they reached their airlock.

"Hold on," Lupo said.

He gently laid the unconscious Ophion on the ground, then loped down the landing ramp and approached the hanger bay's control module. Lupo tapped through a series of menus before sprinting back to Auren and the Keth.

"All ready. Let's board. The bay doors will open in five minutes, and then we can get the fuck out of here."

Auren felt an odd sense of relief as they passed back into "their" ship. They carefully settled Ophion down in the medbay pod. The automated ship nurse quickly began poking and prodding him with various instruments and tools. Auren was uncertain whether such approaches would be helpful with his alien anatomy but was too exhausted to worry too much about it.

"Do you think he'll be okay?" Auren asked anxiously.

He watched as the nurse wiped the last of the purple-blue blood from Ophion's muscled torso.

"I hope so," Lupo murmured. "I know what it's like to be a prisoner. No one deserves that fate, not even a Keth."

Auren looked on at Ophion as he struggled to breathe, coughing and spasming violently. The ship tried to soothe him, performing some type of blood analysis. Lupo patted Auren on the back before wordlessly heading to the bridge. Auren stared on for a moment longer and realized that he was maybe even rooting for Ophion to recover. Watching him exact his vengeance had been brutal, and yet somehow inspiring.

When Auren joined Lupo in the bridge he was seated back in the command chair. The battle cruiser's bay doors had begun to open, and the sight of the stars beyond made Auren realize just how much he had come to enjoy the freedom their prior days in the void had provided. He yearned to return to them now. Auren sat cross-legged on the floor beside his companion, resting his head against the man's thigh. A gentle hand cupped the side of Auren's head as Lupo hummed softly in his chair. With his other hand, he guided their vessel out of the battle cruiser.

"Soldier's Luck," Auren said after a while. "The ship, I mean. You asked for a name."

"Soldato Fortunato," Lupo said.

"Is that your native tongue?" Auren asked.

"I thought you'd recognize it after before," Lupo teased.

"Fortunato it is," Auren chuckled.

He rested there while Lupo guided their ship back out into the void—onward toward Thestle—and Auren felt content to just be for the first time in a very long while.

It was almost enough to keep his thoughts away from all the bloodshed…