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Shaun A. Saunders

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Pirate Music PDF Print E-mail

By Alan Richard

sfgenreAh crap, I'm in trouble this time.

Jowal whined something well above my hearing range.

"I'm kinda busy right now," I said.

Jowal dialled her frequency back to something a little less likely to crack glass and tried again. "They're shooting at us."

"Not a lot I can do about that now," I yelled, flailing towards the console.  I lunged at the knob that diverts all energy to the rear deflector shields.

The escape pod launched.

"Dammit."

"They've just vaporised the escape pod."

"I can see that, Jowal. Where the hell is Enop?"

"She's down in the galley."

Something hit us — hard.

"Don't tell me she's been listening?" I said.

Jowal nodded.

"That's just great," I shouted, slamming my fist into the console, "we're giving this up now before they blow us out of the sky."

Jowal squealed something. I backed off the thrusters and sagged into my seat.  I'm not a pilot, never have been. The cold grey of the patrol cruiser filled the monitor.

***

We stood before the Melsonite commander.  My reflection danced off the oddly angled panels of his uniform. It was vaguely hypnotic.

He'd sent his grunts in first. They'd rounded us up — a bit more vigorously than was strictly necessary — but we had tried to outrun him, so I couldn't really complain.  One appeared behind him and whispered something in Melsonite. I didn't catch it.

Turning to us, he switched to Common.

"I hate smugglers."

I didn't protest this. He was right, after all.

Enop swayed beside me. Being tripedal, I was fairly sure she'd be right. She slammed to the ground, hard. Guess not. The commander rounded on me.

"Your friend seems to have a bit of a problem, I think she likes to listen to things, bad things, illegal things."

On cue, one of his grunts produced the disk.

"What is this?" asked the captain with enough exaggerated theatre to fill the gravity well of a small planet.

"A primitive storage device, sir," said the grunt

"And what — exactly — does it store?"

"By the state of her —" the guard waved dismissively at Enop's prostrate, giggling figure, " — I'd guess music, sir."

"Analyse it. Now."

As the grunt scurried away, the commander's eyes lit on me. "I know you've been to Earth, Jayen. I know that you and these two filthy Elors are responsible for half the pirated music that's destroying this world, and when I find it, rest assured that you are going to rot."

I'm screwed.

***

Two days later they released me.  Enop's ship was impounded and destroyed. She was sentenced to a year in the brig for possession of a small amount of audio altering substance.  They didn't find the cargo.

***

Years later, I ran into Jowal on a frontier moon. We reminisced about the old days.  Apparently Enop died shortly after her release. She'd loaded enough Earth music to lobotomise an infantry division into an escape pod, and launched herself towards a passing comet.

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Ten...

Field of Dreams

By Brendan D. Carson

sfgenre"You ready?" said Nightshayde.

Sebastyan nodded.  He had smears of black hair-dye on his face, because he hadn't been able to find boot-polish.

"Once we're over the wire, we have to be quick."

"Do you reckon Julia managed to lure the guards away?" said Sebastian.

Read more
 

Nine...

Blood

By David Such

sfgenreThere are two theories about how to win an argument with a woman. Neither one works. Sam Blood considered his next statement carefully: "You don't think we should go through the front?"

"Do I look like an idiot?"

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Eight...

Pirate Music

By Alan Richard

sfgenreAh crap, I'm in trouble this time.

Jowal whined something well above my hearing range.

Read more
 

Seven...

Snayk

By Felicity Dowker

horrorgenreLucas was dreaming, and the dream was bad.

Something alien and savage crept into his brain and put down roots there.  It grew, spreading its loathsome way down his spine and into his belly, where it writhed through his intestines in slimy abandon.

Read more
 

Six...

Ménage à Trois

By Mark Farrugia

horrorgenreThrough a tear-bubbled eye, and drug-induced comfort, Sandy stares up at me as though it's in my power to save her.

Hell, I wish it was.

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Five...

The Buck Stops - At Woop Woop

By Shaun A. Saunders

horrorgenreLife made sense, mostly, until the following email arrived:

"Hello,

I hurry writing you this message cos i
don't,have much time on the pc here,so i have to brief

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Four...

Jack Austin - Xeno Hunter

By Jamie Richter

sfgenre"So what happened to your last cameraman, Jack?" the bespectacled technician queried, hammering the seventh and final backpack-sized transmitter into the black, alkaline soil of Marius-2. "And don't spare any detail."

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Three...

Terminal Illness

By Alan Baxter

sfgenreMary sat at her son's bedside, hands clasped in desperation, eyes dark. She stared — trying to cure him by willpower alone.

"You need a break, darling."

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Two...

They Called Her Larry

By Steve Duffy

sfgenreThey called her Larry, they always had. It was the only name she'd ever known. But somewhere, deep down, she knew it didn't belong to her. It belonged to someone else, someone not her. She knew, in that same deep down place, that she had another name, must have another name.

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One...

Weapons

By S. A. Harris

sfgenreOutside my room, from along the passageway, came the sounds of  my parents watching the Spectravision — making loud comments that disturbed my poetical concentration. On the desk in front of me lay the poem, "Weapons" by the little-known turn-of-the-century poet S. A. Harris. The text read as follows:

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New Books

spirit-coverSpirit

Gwyneth Jones
ISBN 0575074728(978-057-507472-9)
RRP $55.00 January 2009
Gollancz Hardback (234 x 153)
Read more...