Life of a Pirate

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Zoe Heriot prided herself on her independence. You didn’t get to where she was why blindly following orders and not questioning at least the occasional authority. If she had listened to the Doctor to stay behind, then she never would have stolen aboard the TARDIS. If she had listened to his ridiculous stories, how would she had found out about the Cybermen? And if she had just listened to the Wheel members, then she wouldn’t have investigated UNIT and hacked into their system to find that she had, indeed, traveled with the Doctor.

That would have resulted in her not hunting down the elusive Time Lord, finding him, and subsequently demanding to travel. And if she listened to the Doctor about just staying in the TARDIS, then she certainly wouldn’t be hanging upside down in her Wheel uniform, her foot caught in the grating of the ship the TARDIS had landed on.

After a few moments of calling out for help, Zoe had decided to rely on that independence (and tenacious audacity) instead of being the damsel in distress. She thrashed about and grasped the mesh tightly. She wiggled her foot stubbornly. “Oh, fine,” she said, pulling her foot out of the shoe. The lower half of her body swung down and Zoe lost her grip. She let out a small squeak of surprise as her body hit the ground underneath her. She sat up and rubbed her head.

She pulled out her flashlight, her dark eyes adjusting slowly to the darkness. She turned on the flashlight and looked around. She couldn’t see anything, which she knew didn’t always mean good things. The entire lower level of this ship was coated in dust. Zoe left odd footprints in the dust – her shoe leaving their brand in the dust, and her foot leaving her small foot-and-toe prints. The Doctor had mentioned something valuable (and most likely stolen) on the ship.

Where there were valuable (and most likely stolen) items, there was something exciting to be found. And if she could just study the item, she was certain she could help the Doctor somehow. She paused in her investigation, crouching down and examining the floor. The dust seemed misplaced here. She looked up, shining her flashlight forwards. Footprints. Excellent. Zoe stood and brushed herself off. “Hello?” she called curiously, walking forwards and clicking off the flashlight, twirling it between her fingers.

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The distorted sounds of classical music drifted along the bridge, one of 'Rossini’s' creations keeping Dante company throughout the night. The Vanquisher was drifting lazily through the dead of space, her upper hold full of their latest haul of treasures. Dante herself was reclining in the leather padded chair of the captain, feet crossed and set on the console panel and hands waving in the air in a vague attempt at conducting. The lights on the bridge were dimmed; the only flashes of light came from the various instalments around the room. The crew members had all knocked off for the night and were comfortably asleep in their cabins. All was quiet. Too quiet.

At first, it was just a blip in the music. Dante’s eyes shot open and frowned as the sound waves began to drag out and distort; looking left and right to see if there was anything on the screens. The picture on the screens themselves then began to distort with a white noise like whine. “Oy!” Dante hissed, flicking it with a finger, scowling. The screen seemed to get the message for a second, before emitting a high pitched whine. Dante clamped her hands over her ears as the lights on the bridge suddenly went out, a few light fixings busting over her head. “The hell was that?” Dante cursed. Something seemed to be creating a draining and then a surge of energy. The emergency lights came on, bathing the bridge in a damning red glow.

Dante stood there as still as she could on the spinning chair to have a closer look at one of the lights when the power had surged back on. The sudden light blinded her, causing her to loose her footing and fall flat on her backside in front of the console. The red-glow had faded, being replaced with a harsh white light and the voice of the speaker system.

“Unexpected item in the bagging area.”

The alert sounded in a generic female voice, a map of the ship coming to light on the main screen in the centre of the bridge, a flashing red blip pulsating in the deep hold cargo area. “What? How?” Dante challenged, looking from the flashing red blip to the speaker in disbelief. What really puzzled her, more than the aforementioned item, was how that recording came to be installed on her ship. Lars stumbled through the double doors, the only one stirred by the noise. It hadn’t gone ship-wide yet, thankfully, or the rush to the bridge would be more like a full scale riot than an orderly, if not bedraggled, march.

“Unexpected item in the bagging area.”

Repeated the voice; Dante rolling her eyes at the sound. “Where did that come from?” Dante quizzed him, picking herself up off the floor as smoothly as possible. “Well, I’m not entirely sure. It just… appeared in the deep cargo hold. Since when did we even have a deep cargo-.” Lars muttered in disbelief, leaning over the diagnostics he was running and glancing back up at Dante. “No, not that.” She dismissed hurriedly, cutting him off. “The recording. When the hell did we pick that up?” Dante had wandered over to her gun locker, picking out her pistols and holstering them at her waist alongside charge. “Oh, that.” Lars chimed, a boyish grin appearing on his face. “You picked it up about a year ago on a raid of a earth-bound passenger ship. You said it sounded… ‘cool’.” Lars had raised an eyebrow at her, his features contorting into mild humour, spoiled by his left hand rubbing sleep out of his eye and a yawn he could barely hold back. “Since when did you have an encyclopaedic knowledge of my exploits, Lars?” Dante teased, grinning, and checked the charge on her pistols. Lars had no reply to that, just a sheepish roll of his eyes and he quickly turned back to the map.

“Unexpected item in the bagging area.”

The alert continued. “Oh will you just shut up?” Dante growled in disdain at the system, glaring up into the ceiling of the bridge. “Right, I’ll go down to investigate whilst you run things from here. I’ll let you know it it’s anything interesting.” Dante called after herself, disappearing through the doors towards the lift. Lars shook his head, turning back to the controls with a vaguely amused grin on his face and the recording to keep him company.

The lift rattled down to the bridge floor, various diagnostics appearing on the screens littering the walls. Upbeat, and rather inappropriate music, hissed out of the muffled speakers. “Pack it in.” Dante muttered, banging her fist against one of the speakers to finally bring it to audible level and turned back to the red blip. Only now, there were two of them. A smaller red blip was making its way slowly across the hold. Both dots were in the deep hold, the one reserved for potentially dangerous cargo. No-one had been down there in a long, long time. Dante racked her brains for a way the ‘unexpected item’ could have appeared on her ship whilst simultaneously cursing her choice of lift music.

The doors chimed open, the music stopped, and she was presented with a dusty expanse stretching in front of her into the dark. When faced with such a problem as this, Dante decided to tackle it as any pirate worth their salt would; head on and without hesitation. The lights here were dim at best, the bulbs long past their use-by date and still running on filaments. This was an example of archaic piracy. Why, no-one had probably been down here actively since her grandfather piloted the vessel! Dante stepped confidently out of the lift, pulling a light from her belt and using it to scan the area. A quick clap had previously rendered the lights useless, so the light stick was all there was. The calm glow had her stumble upon a set of mismatched foot prints in the dust. This was probably her second blip. Dante was about to make a move when a short ‘hello’ cut through the half-light, turning the pirates head and drawing a frown on her face.

“Oy!” Dante called out, glaring at the unexpected object as she rounded the crate to find a woman with a flashlight and clearly one shoe down. “The ‘ell are you doin’ ‘ere?” Dante didn’t seem scared, she didn’t seem intimidated and judging by the fact that her first question was about what the woman was doing there rather than who she was, it seemed quite clear that the pirate didn’t find this woman very threatening, or interesting for that matter. In fact, the captain seemed vaguely bored and disappointed to find out that her ‘unexpected item’ was just a human (or at least she thought) and not a ravenous monster from the dark depths of space. Still, there were other times to look forward to.

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“Oy! The ‘ell are you doin’ ‘ere?”

Zoe quirked an eyebrow, looking up at the woman inquisitively. She flashed the torch in her face, squinting at her analytically. At first glance the woman didn’t particularly reek of intelligence – her mannerisms were crude and her posture was open to interpretation, and her accent suggested someone who clearly had not gotten a proper education. Still, Zoe was not the type of person act out just because she believed someone had a lesser intelligence than her... especially if the person was armed and potentially dangerous.

Instead, Zoe forced herself to take another look at the woman. She was clearly one of the people in charge of this ship, if not the captain herself. If she had been merely a servant or crew member, then she certainly would have asked for a name to refer her to a superior. They also presumably wouldn’t have been dressed as nicely as her, though admittedly Zoe wasn’t familiar with the ins-and-outs of pirate fashion, particularly ‘space-pirate’ fashion. While she was working on the Wheel they had encountered ‘pirates’, though they hadn’t resembled Earth fashionable pirates – they’d been merely thieves on skimpy ships at best.

Despite the woman’s crude manners (if Zoe wasn’t mistaken, she was sure that pirates weren’t actually known for their manners) she could recognize the spark of intelligence upon closer inspection. Zoe lowered her flashlight after a few seconds, glancing around her. She needed to get this woman away from the TARDIS. It wasn’t too far behind her... it was up on another level of this cargo hold, but the TARDIS was sort of hard to miss... especially if you were looking for things that didn’t belong. So Zoe took a step forward, playing the part of a frightened child. She was edging on eighteen years old, but thanks to her small stature she didn’t look much older than fifteen or sixteen.

If the woman found the TARDIS, who knows what she could do with it? The Doctor had mentioned that it took a very special key (and a steady and knowledgeable hand) to open the TARDIS door, but pirates weren’t exactly known for using keys to get to things that wanted. Or, at least, the pirates that Zoe had grown up hearing stories about. Thinking of the Doctor... the woman didn’t seem at all worried about anyone else being in the cargo hold. Was it possible that he had somehow slipped past whatever radar or sensor that the woman had set up in the ship? She took a furtive glance behind her, scanning for any sort of sensor she may have set off while coming through to this part.

Zoe looked back to the woman, narrowing her eyes slightly. She needed to concentrate. She didn’t know this ship’s policy on taking prisoners (or, in fact, if they were pirates). Zoe took another step towards the woman, holding out her hands to prove that she was unarmed and therefore at least theoretically harmless. She offered a wide smile. “Do you prefer the term ‘pirate’ or ‘swashbuckling adventurer’?” Zoe asked innocently. She brushed some brunette hair past her eyes and shut off her torch, looking up at the woman. She supposed that she was supposed to answer the woman’s question, and her mind was racing to think of an appropriate answer.

She wouldn’t be able to answer any questions if she went with the stowaway story – she couldn’t claim knowledge about their last port, or any port, really. The Doctor hadn’t mentioned what section of space they were in nor what time period they were in. And she couldn’t claim that her ship had come aboard – the woman would surely want to investigate it, if only to find something valuable. Instead, Zoe twirled the flashlight in her grasp and tilted her head. “Vortex manipulator,” she said finally, and shined her flashlight on the ground. “I was trying to meet my friend and I got you instead,” Zoe lied evenly, a frown pulling at her lips. “I just can’t seem to find it. It must have fallen off my wrist.”

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Dante used the time the girl was obviously using to study her to do exactly the same. The light-stick was raised and the pirates face creased into a concentrating frown, running her eyes up and down, her sight being drawn to obvious places to conceal a weapon. Satisfied that there were no questionable bulges or outlines, Dante then began to turn her attention to who this girl was. She wasn’t exactly a threat physically, and her rather conservative manner of dress pinned her as quite boring. Dante frowned and scratched thoughtfully at the scales on the back of her neck. She’d see what Lars thought of her. What to actually do with her in the meantime was another matter.

The pirate stance wasn’t exactly threatening, more intimidating and certainly intrigued. Who didn’t love a bit of excitement? The question wasn’t much of a surprise to her. Her face wasn’t exactly plastered on every street corner throughout the universe, but most people can spot a pirate when they see one. There’s something rather distinct about them. A small laugh graced her features, though whether it was friendly or mocking was open to debate. “I prefer the term ‘trade route conquistador’, but pirate will do if you’re that way inclined. The name’s Captain Wilder, what do you call yousself kid?” Grammar issues aside, Dante didn’t really ping this kid as a client or enemy. ‘Raider’ was more of a self-proclaimed title, or what most ship captains called her kind. Much emphasis was put on the word ‘captain’, and she looked at the girl as if she expected to be recognised. The Wilders had been pillaging space for centuries and generations, surely she’d be at least known.

The woman found it fit to finally holster the pistol and cast an inquisitive glance over the girl. She listened to the girl’s explanation with a thoughtful frown. If she was the second blip (which she was certainly looking to be) – where the hell was the first? If anything, Dante didn’t quite believe the girls story, so decided to humour her in the meantime. She just hoped that the intercom system still worked down here and that Lars was awake enough to get what she was hinting at.

“Lars.” Dante had reached up and flicked a switch on a contraption connected to her ear, establishing a communications line with the current pilot. “Lars – wake up!” She hissed, hearing the telltale signs of snoring on the other end of the line. A strangled yelp came from the other end of the line as Lars finally jolted himself awake. Dante just rolled her eyes. “Run a scan of the ship for a ‘Vortex Manipulator’ will ya? Make it sharp, we got comp’ny.” She ordered professionally, pulling both of the girls hands out and snapping a pair of laser cuffs on them with a resounding ‘zap’. It was just procedure, and to make sure the she didn’t run off. Hopefully later she’d be able to lead them to the first blip, though whether she knew or not was another matter.

“Humour me.” Dante said with a short laugh, fingers drumming a tune on one of the idle crates. She looked down, displeased, at the dust before wiping it on her trousers. “You’re lucky kid. Your story sticks.” She said to the girl, starting back towards the lift and expecting her to follow. “Wake the rest of the crew up and send Dax and Irwin to find the blasted thing. I’m bringin’ ‘er to the bridge. Oh – and put the kettle on.” Dante spoke with a grin, the distant echoes of a deep, echoing klaxon drifting through the ship as she neared the lift. She laughed along with Lars and closed the connection, switching of the light stick and nudging the girl into the lift. 

“Bridge.” She said to the computer, the doors closing sharply and the annoying lift music started up again; the cheerful tune reverberating off the cold lift walls. Dante found herself humming along despite herself, rather starting to enjoy this outing. It seemed like it wasn’t so boring after all, judging by the rather malevolent smile on the captain’s face.

The lift doors shot open to a hive of activity. Lars was barking orders at Dax and Irwin, the pair lounging there as if they were just being given a grocery list. Irwin was the resident human, and was often teased as being so. Despite Lars looking human, he insisted that he most certainly was not. Whether that was due to not wanting to be associated with Irwin or for another reason, Dante didn’t know. Dax, or ‘Kahler-Dax’ as he called himself, was a huge hulk of a man with enough metal on him to start his own scrap heap. You didn’t ask questions in this business. Ood was milling around in the corner, currently cleaning one of the bridge’s windows. Ood had been rescued (or so they said) from a ship they had destroyed a couple of months ago. He seemed content to be there, and that was enough for Dante and co. and frankly he'd come to be considered an unofficial mascot or butler, depending on who you talked to.

Computers beeped, lights flashed and the sound of talking greeted the pair. Somewhere off in the distance, a kettle whistled. Dante swept her hand dramatically at the organised chaos, a grin creeping over her face and excitement dancing in her eyes.

“Welcome to ‘The Vanquisher’.” 

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“Trade route conquistadora,” Zoe repeated drily, putting a slight emphasis on the last syllable. A part of her told her she shouldn’t be arguing semantics, but Zoe was never one to shy away from a challenge. A smirk tugged on her lips. “Certainly lacks the luster ‘pirate’ gives off.” she said thoughtfully. The woman put emphasis on her title and the way that she was staring at Zoe showed that Captain Wilder certainly expected to be recognized. Well, she could certainly pretend she’d heard the named, or Zoe could admit that she had never heard of anyone named ‘Wilder’ before in the context of ‘trade route conquistador’. “Any relation to Gene?” she asked with a small smile.

Zoe took a glance at the gun and decided that it was, in fact, in her best interest to introduce herself. “Doctor Heriot,” she said, putting as much emphasis on the word ‘Doctor’ as Wilder had ‘Captain’. She wasn’t the only one who could throw a title around, although she was the only one who could throw a gun around. “Astrophysicist and astrometricist. Pure mathematics major with honors,” she said, trying to straighten her posture to make herself look taller. Her young age coupled with her short stature didn’t make quite the intimidating figure that the captain had. Zoe had always relied on her mind to be the most intimidating thing about her. She’d outtested the Doctor’s intelligence, and she held onto that fact as she lamely recounted the story of a missing vortex manipulator. There was a small hint of regret that she hadn’t stayed on the TARDIS, but the larger and more active part of her was teeming with excitement that something worth paying attention to was finally happening.

She refused to glance behind to where the TARDIS was – if the woman was nearly as smart as Zoe was giving her credit for, she’d realize there was something familiar there. She’d already committed the location to her memory. There were good things that came with her memory. She scanned her eyes across the rest of the cargo hold, trying to look nonchalant about her story. Zoe could remember from her psychology classes that holding eye contact for too long was a sign of a liar, so instead she only made occasional eye contact.

Her dark eyes went back to the captain as she hissed for Lars. She listened carefully and, after Wilder hissed loudly, Zoe could hear a faint yelp even from where she was standing. She giggled softly, covering her mouth and chuckling. She forced the smile to remain on her face even as the captain ordered him to run a scan for a vortex manipulator. What were the chances of them having a vortex manipulator on the board? She ran the figures through her head – the chances were relatively slim, but there was still a chance. Vortex manipulators weren’t that unheard of.

Zoe was pulled out of her thoughts when the captain grabbed her hands and put her in laser handcuffs. She quirked an eyebrow up at the woman before staring back down at them. If they had been conventional handcuffs, Zoe could have used her slim wrists to her advantage. But as someone had recently told her, every trap was escapable and there was no bondage impenetrable. Zoe glanced up as the captain told her that her story checked out. She stared at the captain, a bemused expression on her face. “Of course it did,” she said finally, a hint of disbelief in her tone. “I don’t make it a habit to lie.” Well, that wasn’t a lie – Zoe was normally very truthful, with the exception of having a pirate with weapons asking her what the hell she was doing there.

She followed the woman to the lift. She was keeping rather calm despite the smile on the captain’s face. You so owe me one, Doctor, Zoe thought irritably. The alarm ringing through the ship was beginning to grate on her nerves when mixed with the lift music. Thankfully the lift didn’t last too long and Zoe stepped off it gratefully, looking around the ship curiously. There didn’t seem to be any remains of creatures (humanoid or otherwise), they weren’t drunkenly fighting, and they seemed quite... well, normal for a band of pi- trade route conquistadors.

Except for the huge man who reminded her of a cyborg she’d once tried to befriend. And the man with the tentacles on his face. That was odd. “Thank you for the warm greeting,” Zoe chirped, a hint of sarcasm behind the cheerful tone in her voice. She looked a bit put off by the computers and the lights, and she looked between the crew thoughtfully. “Just how dated is this ship?” she asked politely. “It just seems to me that things aren’t running as well as they could. Do you have a mechanic?” she asked. “I used to travel with the universe’s best mechanic – well, two of them actually, at different times. Or rather during the same time, I once almost ran into myself...” she trailed off, taking a step away from the captain and looking around.

“I could tell you what I know. Without touching anything. I am a prisoner, and believe you me, you don’t want me to touch anything when I’m cross.”