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Finally managed to get my head functional enough to cobble together another chapter. With many, many, many thanks to Mewitti , who helped me revive and keep going - and who also contributed that magnificent cover. (I feel like it sums up the chapter so well you probably don’t need to wade through all my words, unless you enjoy that kind of masochism.)

***

PIRANHA
Chapter 14: The Black Hole, Part 4c:

The preparations on the stage were rapid, surprisingly organized, and alarming. Dozens of small repair robots and muscular slaves had swarmed out like an army of ants at a fallen sandwich, and with much screeching of power tools were rapidly disassembling what Piranha had thought was a solid metal wall at the back of the stage. This revealed a vast open space like an outdoor game playing field. The terrain sloped gently upward, away from the audience, so that its full length was easily visible. It seemed to have a rough, dirt-like surface, with a shallow ditch running down the center from the front to the back of what could hardly any longer be called a “stage.” The whole field must have filled a full quarter of the length of the enormous ship, just about the depth of the auditorium itself. At the far end of that landscape, there was another solid metal wall.

On the other side of that wall, hard though it was to grasp, Piranha knew that there was another equally huge space; the gigantic docking area through which throngs of slaves were at that exact moment being loaded onto the Black Hole.

Now troops of war robots were arriving, some ten on each side – the enormous, lumbering, laser cannon-bearing gunbots, triggering old mental shadows that involuntarily wrenched a low growl out of Piranha. These tank-like monsters lined up at intervals along the left and right sides of the stage, facing each other from the far edges of the field.

As they rolled thunderously on their treads into view, a cheer rose up from the audience. It got louder as other robots began to emerge from the wings, lighter but still huge warrior robots carrying big arm-held weapons, energy cannons or rapid shell-firing guns. They arranged themselves around the stage in pairs or trios between the giant gunbots, also facing inwards towards the field, standing stiffly like soldiers, their weapons held poised and ready.

Piranha stared at the field, the army, the audience. He turned to Anaconda, in the seat on his left.

“What is this?” he asked. “Is there going to be a war?”

“A war?” Anaconda’s long, thin, matte black face turned, focusing the hard yellow light of his eyes on him. “A war? I do hope, Piranha, that you don’t mean you long to see your metallic brethren, your fellow pirates, your very own loyal subordinates, massacring each other?”

Piranha shrugged slightly, turned away again. “Not a war, then.”

“Not the way you’re thinking.” Anaconda returned to his cup of rum. The complacent little smirk in his voice sent a cold chill skittering down Piranha’s back.

The pirate audience had for gradually fallen into a slow, rhythmic, obscene, half-humorous, half-ominous chant, all the pirates shouting and stamping together. As time went on and on, and nothing stirred onstage, the chant grew gradually less humorous, more ominous; the hall shaking with slower, louder, heavier stomps from thousands of united boots, reverberating with simultaneous roars from thousands of throats. Piranha, his first-mate reflexes itching, shifted uneasily in his chair. Anaconda, however, seemed entirely unperturbed at what looked like an incipient riot.

Then, from the front of the stage to the back, a line of strong ceiling lights snapped on with the harsh blue-white glare so often favoured by the robots. The auditorium lights dimmed; and a deep howl of joy filled the place as onto the vast game field the entrance of the players began.

They were humans, of course. Hundreds of them, many hundreds, streaming onto the field from both sides of the stage like swarms of ants between the towering, motionless gunbots. Humans, mostly men, mostly young; shambling one after the other in a disorganized, ungainly mass. They were dressed in simple, archaic, ill-fitting armour – face-protecting helmets, round hand-held shields, arm and shin plates, breastplates – the group on the left in blue-grey steel, those on the right in bronze. All of them gripped, however awkwardly, weapons, primitive ones – swords, pikes, daggers. Pushed forward by those behind, they advanced awkwardly, some with their heads down, some stumbling, some jerking and darting or skittering feverishly like unruly horses, frantic but not quite daring or able to bolt. A few, only a few, held themselves upright, alert, wary, ready. As the playing field filled up with them, they bunched into two masses confronting each other across the shallow center ditch.

The game players. The game pieces. Piranha stared at them. Where had they come from? Who were they? Not pirates. But besides the pirates, the only other humans on board were —

Slaves. And captives. Armed and armoured they might be, but they were no army. These were not warriors. Anyone kidnapped from a planet who had ever shown himself a fighter would already have been put in a – in a concrete box. These were what was left.

As they filed onto the field, the yelling of the audience redoubled, multiplied, erupted into a cacophony of bellowing, stamping, and throwing of metal bottles, some at the stage. One hit a “soldier,” almost knocking him down, and the straggling line of captives wavered, fragmented, fell apart, bodies caroming into their neighbours in confusion and swelling panic.

More bottles were thrown at the stage, and Piranha, first-mate instincts fully roused, leapt to his feet, ready to launch himself through a window. But several of the huge gun-carrying robots in the wings came down to the front of the stage, glowering at audience and captives both. The captives froze, crept back into place; and the audience, laughing and jeering, returned to hurling only noise.

The noise was violent enough. It went on and on, minute after minute, while the two armies were arraying themselves many rows deep all down the length of the field on both sides. The volume was stunning, brain-pulverizing; shivering the officers’ box on its sturdy pylons and reverberating inside it as though the air molecules themselves were slamming back and forth with the force of heavy baseballs.

“Close the windows! Damn it, shut those swamprustblotched discharged windows!” In a fractional lull in the auditory onslaught, Anaconda’s amplified voice finally broke through enough that the two or three officers sitting next to a still-open window shook out of their sonic coma enough to screw it shut. The barrage of sound didn’t cease, but it was dampened down below the pain threshold.

Piranha sagged back in his chair, eyes closed, his body vibrating like instrument strings. It was only partly from the noise, although in all his life he had never conceived that so much biologically-created sound could exist.

A tall, broad, smoky grey robot wearing a rakishly red, gold-trimmed pirate hat was now striding out to the front of the field to stand at the dividing ditch, facing into the audience. As he raised his hands, the audience’s thousands of individual screams massed into a solid wall.

The grey robot could fractionally be heard at moments bawling into the audience, which didn’t diminish its volume for a moment. It appeared he was laying out the rules for the combat, not that anyone seemed to care. From his arm gestures, it looked as though the basic idea was for one team to cross the ditch to occupy the other team’s territory.

Anaconda was looking at his first mate, slumped motionless under the shelter of his hat. He picked up the hat and took hold of Piranha’s head, turning it so their eyes met.

“Piranha. First Mate. Thinking deep thoughts?”

Piranha sat up; politely nipped his hat out of the Boss’s hand. “I’m deeply moved by the audience participation.”

“Oh, don’t try to buffalo me. You’re lying there reeking with egotistical gloom while those brave young fellows are marching out onto the field of battle. No joy whatsoever! Yet all these months you’ve been awash in puling pity for the creatures. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. So now, why so cruel? Why so unfeeling? Why no delight at their opportunity?”

Piranha frowned. “Their opportunity.”

Grouper, on the other side of Anaconda, was grinning broadly, his flat little eyes peering out from among the ample rounds of his face.

Anaconda permitted himself a small smile as well. “You’ll be ashamed of your spoil-sporting attitude when you understand what’s going on. Don’t you see this is for their benefit?”

“Benefit?” Piranha repeated, blankly.

“Yes, of course,” Anaconda began; then was drowned out by an earsplitting, high-pitched screech as if from a gigantic steam whistle, the massive simultaneous blast of all the energy cannons carried by the gunbots firing into the air (apparently short-range charges, since the ceiling collapse Piranha momentarily expected didn’t happen), and a fresh roar from the audience that once again rattled the windows.

“The start signal,” Anaconda noted, superfluously.

It was the signal indeed, but after so much buildup and so much noise, all that followed was an anticlimactic silence. The two armies facing each other across the little ditch made no move. They wavered in place, gripping their weapons uncertainly; looking anxiously around, as though hoping at any moment someone would admit this was all a joke and they could go home.

Even the audience halted for a moment, suspended in ear-ringing silence. Anaconda, Grouper, the officers, the pirate masses out in the auditorium, everyone stilled, all fixated on the battlefield. Piranha, frozen under his hat, could not breathe; but he too was unable not to watch.

The pause went on; five seconds, ten seconds.

Then, with a thunderous discharge, gun-carrying robots on each side of the stage lifted their massive weapons and fired directly into crowd in front of them.

And in the next moment the surviving players surged forward in two huge boiling mobs and in a moment were flailing at each other in frantic battle.

And the moment after that, the auditorium was again engulfed with the cataclysmic yelling, laughing, cheering, stomping, and howling of the gratified pirates.

If closing the windows had abated the assault from the auditorium, it was no protection against the chaos occurring inside the booth. The robot officers at the front whooped and jumped, shoving each other, waving little bronze and steel pennants, occasionally letting a friendly fist fly at a neighbour, and bouncing on their benches like excited five-ton children. Every seat in the officer’s box jarred with their enthusiasm, from their benches at the front, to the rear where the Slaver and Piranha sat on either side of the Captain. The Slaver’s men, a tight group at the left side of the box, glared at the robots, gripping their armrests, a few turning greenish with the subtle jiggling and swaying. Piranha himself felt a trifle seasick, although not so much from that cause.

He couldn’t take his eyes off the combat. He had been on many a battlefield himself, but never seen one from this god-like perspective.

The gods must have strong stomachs.

Battle? Gods, demons, and trees, this wasn’t a battle, it was a series of ghastly accidents. It was a floundering massacre. Whose idea was it to hand so many infants so many sharp objects?

And who had brought them all in to be massacred?

He gripped the chair arms, held on, as a slow tide of nausea lapped at him. The noise, the relentless emotions surging through the auditorium, the oceanlike swells of lust and sadism and terror and pain, he was drowning. It tightened, clenched at him like a fist, a claw in his abdomen, it twisted. He cringed.

And a volcanic blast of rage seared through him.

And vanished. Involuntarily he collapsed in his chair. For a moment he didn’t have the strength to breathe.

He knew Anaconda’s sardonic gaze was on him.

He took a breath at last. And another.

***

With the battle well underway, the atmosphere throughout the auditorium had turned festive. For the robot pirates, this final act was clearly the climax of the evening. Beatings, torture, sex – all good enough light entertainment, but this was the real thing. The intensity of their joy in the fighting was outdone only by their businesslike earnestness in inventing ever-evolving wagers over each tiny detail of the game.

The human pirates out in the auditorium were not much behind in their enthusiasm, and not at all in their betting. In the officers’ box, too, the slaver’s men – although like Grouper devoting more attention to their goblets and mugs of rum now than during the previous acts – watched with interest, commenting and laughing, and were just about as busy gambling as the pirates.

Grouper himself, still a trifle moist and flushed after his recent aesthetic experiences, and Anaconda, a small cold smile on his hard face, also put their wildly contrasting heads together, making, unmaking, agreeing, disputing on bets.

“Let me refill your mug, my transgalactic fleshpot. Now what do you say – 150 goldbiks?”

Grouper paused in his rum absorption to snicker. “150? 150? You long short circuit, is that what you call a bet?”

“All right then, 300.”

“Pah! 300? 500!”

“You want to risk that much? Very well, 500 then.”

“What? Hey, what do you mean? What are you up to, you – miscalculating machine?”

“I merely wished to ensure you have enough gold left to pay for the survivors after you lose.”

“You are a quaint old gadget, Captain. All the same, I’ll say 500 on the Bronze. I do always favor the Bronze. I don’t know why, since they invariably lose.”

“Nonsense! You know my team doesn’t win every time. This a fair fight!”

“Yes... I believe you did lose that one year, what was it, ‘205, when the Steel somehow ran out of men. Always wondered what caused that miraculous accident.”

“I’m sure you couldn’t possibly have any idea.”

“Are you trying to suggest something? What knowledge could I possibly have? Whereas you have every opportunity —”

“Do you imagine I rig it somehow? Are you joking? Those pathetic little organic bodies? You can’t enhance those enough to notice!”

Grouper snorted into his mug. “Can’t enhance? Don’t try to bamboozle me, I deal in bodies.”

Anaconda leaned back, his tight smile widening a trifle. “Very well then. Let’s switch sides. You take Steel this time.”

“What? What are you up to? I certainly will not!”

“Fine, don’t then.”

“What? That’s it, we are switching sides! I’m taking the Steel! Have you got something in your hand there? Some switch somewhere? What is that, a remote control? Just what game are you playing, you clockwork swindler?”

Anaconda held out his long, elegant, empty hands, grinning more. “A remote control! Such a good idea! If only I’d thought of it. How can a poor simple robot hope to keep up with the boundless duplicity of humans?”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Poor simple robot. I’m sticking with the Bronze. And I’m keeping an eye on you.”

Anaconda lounged back in his chair, holding his brass goblet aloft in a delicate grip. “Most flattering. In the meantime, a bet on the number of survivors?”

There was an imperceptible tension, though, in the angle of his smooth metal frame that made Piranha, in the chair next to him, inch subtly a little further away.

Grouper did not detach his face from his mug of rum. “I say... 27 of mine, 30 of yours. –But you can’t really expect me to believe you don’t have such a thing.”

Over the rim of his own drink, Anaconda fixed his pale eyes on the Slaver. “I say 20 and 20. Raise the odds for each additional gap. –You mean a controller?” He chuckled; a small cold clicking sound that chillingly penetrated the ambient noise (not to mention Piranha’s fevered skull). “How like your mentality, body-snatcher.” That freezing little laugh again. “You think that to command obedience from my pirates I would need anything so crude?”

“Pirates? Foo, a little gold will bribe those. But the other humans – all those slaves running loose in your ship – what about them, eh? How do you manage them?”

For a few minutes Anaconda lounged back in his seat, swinging his goblet lightly in his tapered fingers. Then, abruptly, in a voice acid enough to etch metal, the robot said, “It’s not really about controllers, is it, chum? It’s that particular bee again, isn’t it? The one you can’t seem to flush out of your bonnet?”

Grouper took a copious swig, rolled his eyes. “There you go again.”

“That’s what I was thinking about you.”

“Oh, boshtosh. In my position, I do have a certain responsibility, after all.”

“Great grinding gaskets, your position? A wholesale biological accessory distributor?”

Grouper swallowed another mugful, gave a haughty sniff. “Surely you realize how fortunate you are that I deal with you at all, my dear Captain. I do have certain – scruples. Yet I must also acknowledge my duty —”

Resting his hard elbow on the chair arm and his sharp-angled jaw on the upraised hand, Anaconda murmured, “Your duty. Of course. Redeeming the poor sad things from my evil clutches.”

“Now, now, Captain. Not evil. Can a machine be evil?”

Anaconda raised his eyebrows in mock inquiry.

The Slaver smiled, generous, condescending. “After all, evil, as much as good, requires a soul.”

“Bingo.” Sardonically, Anaconda grinned. He pushed a metal bottle of rum at the human. “Do have another, my scrupulous, soul-salving ambassador of the Incontrovertible Pontification or whatever it is. A man of such celestial morality deserves not only infinite profits, but another drink. Help yourself.”

Celestial or not, Grouper promptly did. Then sank into his chair with expansive comfort, waving the half-empty mug. “Nothing personal, you know. No offence, old thing?”

“None taken, I assure you. After all, I am a thing.”

“Think about it,” the Slaver went on. “How can a thing own a living creature? An inanimate object possess something animate? Does that make sense?”

Anaconda did not make a sound, and nothing visibly changed in his attitude; but Piranha, abruptly alarmed, lunged from his seat. The metal hand snatched him out of the air.

“But let’s not forget this thing. He should know. First Mate, is it possible for a robot to own a living creature?”

Piranha, motionless in the clutch of those sharp fingers, made no reply. Anaconda shook his head.

“No opinions on philosophy. Hardly surprising.” With no more effort than if he held a doll, he brought Piranha close to him, smiling mirthlessly into his face. “But you can manage an opinion on sports, surely? We have a bet going, the Scrupulous Ambassador and I, and nothing charges up the game like bringing in some brainless, random element of chance. So tell me, what’s your bet? Which team will win?”

Partly the pain of that metallic grip on his already sore trunk, partly terminal disgust, put a little extra venom into Piranha’s answer. “Win? That’s easy. They all lose.”

“Pah! That’s no bet at all.” Anaconda dropped Piranha back into his seat. “First Mate, you need a drink.”

“I’m not thirsty.”

“Neither am I, but I don’t let trifles like that stop me. Now, here is a goblet for your very own. Take a swig.”

“Anaconda —”

“And that’s Boss. Or Captain, if you must be formal. This really isn’t a formal occasion, though, Piranha, you have my permission to call me Boss.”

“Oh, lord,” Piranha muttered.

“No, that’s for the Minister of Grace over there.”

“That stuff turns my stomach.”

“Again, I don’t let such trivialities get in the way. At least I wouldn’t if I had a stomach – and I’m not so sure you do, for that matter. Sometimes, Piranha, I think you’re only pretending to be human. Now let’s see you take a little dainty sip, just to get started. Come now. Your men look up to you for leadership! You want to set them an example, don’t you? You’re First Mate, you have to look good in front of them!”

Piranha, despite a multiplicity of sarcastic answers biting at his lips, was having trouble getting out any kind of response. “Looking good. Right. My one purpose in life.”

“Up until today, frankly, I did in fact suspect that to be the case.” Anaconda lowered his angular face to stare directly into Piranha’s. “That is, until you dragged yourself in here directly after going through some kind of heavy combat. You’re a disgrace.” He sat back in his chair again, picking up his goblet, then paused and looked at Piranha again. “But perhaps that’s it? Is the little slavelet not taking proper care of your clothes? As First Mate, if you had any concept of dignity, you would make sure you had an appropriate attendant. – Ah! Now that is a good idea! And this is the perfect opportunity. The Black Hole is right here, we can get you something decent. That one you have now isn’t even second-rate. I’m surprised you didn’t pick out something more attractive a long time ago.”

He leaned over towards Grouper, jabbed him suddenly with a sharp elbow out of a mild reverie into which the human had settled.

“Hey! Where—”

“Rumpot, wake up! You could be drinking!”

With a haughty twitch, Grouper heaved himself straight. “I am neither asleep nor drunk. I can hic hold my liquor.”

“You’re certainly holding half my yearly personal supply. But never mind. I want to consult with you; this is your area of expertise. My First Mate here is in need of an upgrade —”

“Seems more your area, not mine.” Grouper peered around the Captain at what seemed to be a smallish pile of dark cloth and a hat. “He’s bio-life, isn’t he? Even a robot should know you can’t replace chips —” He eyed the pile dubiously – from which a nose and two glaring eyes abruptly emerged, so that he pulled sharply back.

Anaconda was grinning. “No, no, my itinerant dealer in delights, you misunderstand me. He needs an upgraded body servant. What have you got in stock?”

“For him?” blurted Grouper. “You think I deal in job lots and factory seconds? Nothing but first-quality merchandise – far over his head!”

“Now, I know he’s not tall, but I thought you might have some suitable miniatures —”

“Oh, Anaconda —” Piranha’s dry, deadpan voice murmured suddenly, close to the likely location of the Captain’s hearing sensor, “— By the way. That bet you mentioned? I think you’re losing.”

The robot’s head turned towards the stage. His yellow eyes flashed red. Then, brushing both Piranha and Grouper roughly aside, he lunged onto his feet and over the next row of seats and strode rapidly down the side aisle to the huge window at the front of the box.

On the benches just in front of that window, any little bronze flags being waved by the robot officers vanished rather miraculously as he strode up. Other than that, the vivacity of their celebration didn’t diminish much.

“Great fight! Er – Isn’t it, Boss?”

Glaring out the window, he ignored them.

At the center of the battlefield, the chaotic attacks of the Steel were crumbling under the advance of a distinctive group of Bronze gladiators, two heads taller than the rest, whose coordinated assault ate through Steel combatants like a patch of antibiotic erasing bacteria in a Petri dish. The Steel players in their path turned to flee, shoving backwards into the mass of panicked bodies behind them, slashing wildly to escape in any other direction, unconscious of whether they attacked the other team or their own. Other Bronze fighters poured clumsily onto the Steel side of the field as the Steel players fled, chasing and cutting down them down with no resistance. The battle, which up till a few minutes ago had not much favoured one side or the other, was looking like it might be over quite suddenly.

Glaring down at the rout, Anaconda pressed the invisible microphone switch on his right forearm and snarled into it. However, his words this time did not blast throughout the auditorium. “Gargara! Gargara! What the corrosion are you at? Reinforcements! Reinforcements! – Yes, to Steel, you idiot, to Steel!” He paused for a moment, glaring at the knot of Bronze fighters as they toppled everything around them. Into the microphone he added, “Those ringers! ... Those ringers, who are they? — And where are the slashdrabbled reinforcements?” He snapped off the microphone, muttering. “Filthy colloidal smears! Feckless gene-buckets!”

At the same moment, a fresh roar rose from the spectators as a new batch of Steel tumbled awkwardly onto the field. They were a ragtag lot, poorly armed and armoured, clutching weapons at odd angles as though they had just been shoved into their hands. They looked bewildered and disoriented, some even facing the wrong way as they were shoved in from offstage, but they at least helped block the retreat of the rest of the disorganized Steel faction. Indeed, the Steel side of the field, occupied by an almost even mix of Steel and Bronze fighters, was now so tightly packed that there was scarcely room to lift a sword; making the battle more desperate than ever.

Anaconda watched, growling. He muttered again into the microphone. “Those ringers! You saw them – huge brutes! Who are they? ... You don’t? ... You didn’t? ... Never mind. Fix it. And keep it fixed – if you hope to remain Insurrection crew. Got it?” He turned off the microphone, still muttering.

It was less than a minute before one of the massive tank-like warbots had dropped a shell neatly onto the group of giant gladiators; and a few moments later, one more, to pick off a couple more that had been missed, along with a few nearby fighters of both teams. Shortly thereafter, another large batch of Steel recruits were thrust onto the field, this time mostly females – some without armour, some even without weapons – crowding the Bronze fighters, along with many Steel, back across the ditch by sheer numbers.

The audience’s howling had taken on notes of savage glee, outrage, ironic delight – but not, it would seem, surprise. Large amounts of money were changing hands throughout the auditorium.

From his outlook at the window the Captain of the Insurrection watched for a few moments more, then turned and stalked back to his seat.

He paused as he reached his chair to look back at the battle again. The two sides had already evened out, the numbers of fighters had been thinned to the point that pikes and swords were again in full play, and the remaining combatants were floundering and tripping over the dead and wounded, raising much laughter from the audience.

Anaconda gave an approving grunt. Tossing equally contemptuous glances at both the Slaver and his first mate, he sat down.

Grouper looked up casually from his mug as the robot thumped into the chair next to him. “Something up, old boy?

“Nothing much. Seems a batch of – pirates, apparently – sneaked onto the field somehow, throwing off the odds – can you imagine! Hopelessly inept game managers. But all taken care of now.”

Grouper sagged a bit in his chair. “Ah. Unfortunate.”

“Such a shame, just when the Steel were winning! Now the Bronze have the advantage!”

Grouper brightened fractionally. “Oh? You mean he – they —”

“Would that surprise you, my old companion in crime?”

“Crime? I beg your pardon! You, my good sir, for all your snooty airs, are a pirate after all; but I am a legitimate businessman, and don’t you forget it!” He brought the mug to his face again – but let out a squeak, as Anaconda with a flick of his hand sent it flying off to the side of the room, towards the Slaver’s lavishly ornamented retinue of merchants. The mug clattered to the floor after just missing one high-hatted head and spraying rum over much cloth of gold and jewellery.

With emphatic dignity, Grouper leaned back in his chair, looking off into the distance with a bland, forbearing gaze.

“My goodness,” Anaconda purred. “How very clumsy. How very clumsy we are today, aren’t we?”

Grouper sniffed. He gestured imperiously to one of the merchants, who grumpily picked up the fallen mug to bring to him. Receiving the cup with great composure from his ungracious but silent subordinate, he sat back and refilled it from the bottle beside him.

“You should get your sensors serviced, my old electroconfederate. Your hand control is indeed abnormally clumsy. Furthermore, in spite of what you say, I can easily see that the Steel are winning.”

Anaconda lounged back in his chair. The fingers of his right hand tapped lightly against the armrest; long, thin, hard, slightly pointed fingers, looking more and more like animated ice picks. “Nothing more to say, my master of cellular shuffling?”

Grouper took a swig. “Not likely.”

“Not at all disappointed?”

Grouper eyed him coolly. “Disappointed, Captain? Disappointment is for those whose happiness, in this sad universe of trials, depends on material things. I am not so deluded.”

Anaconda, as he had before, rested his left elbow on the chair arm, laid his angular head on the upraised hand, still tapping the fingers of the right. “How comforting, to be so well sustained by your disdain of material things. And so well able to cope with clumsiness —” Those pick-like fingers momentarily throttled the chair arm. But then, decisively, he relaxed, his body shifting.

He took up his own goblet, smiled. “My venerable colleague, in the spirit of sportsmanship I feel a – responsibility. To soften your defeat.”

Grouper raised an eyebrow. “Do you now.”

Anaconda leaned back with an expansive gesture. “How about a reverse bet? If the Steel win, you’ll get an extra fifty slaves from my personal collection.”

Grouper gave a dry chuckle. “You mean you still have some rubbish you haven’t managed to pawn off on me?”

“Nonsense. These are a special complement I was planning to retain on board. But for your benefit, I will sacrifice them.”

“And what would you extort in return, my strangely generous Captain?”

Anaconda looked at him for a considerable time. Then said, deliberately, “An end to your wearisome, insipid games.”

“Why Anaconda!”

“You know exactly what I’m referring to. I can’t understand why you’re being so coy. It’s to your advantage as much as mine.”

Grouper sent him a blubbery wink – possibly the most unpleasant thing that had happened in the room to that point. He refilled his goblet again and smiled complacently. “No thanks. Keep your complement. I’ve got all the numbers I need.”

Anaconda tilted his head and leaned back in his chair. “Well, then,” he said, with a grin like an alligator’s, “Perhaps there’s still one thing you do want from me.”

Face in his mug, Grouper cocked an eye at him, shrugged.

Anaconda murmured, “I’ve been thinking... I might negotiate.”

Grouper, though his expression of blasé indifference didn’t change, put down his mug. “What more is there to negotiate?”

“I’m talking about the side deal.”

“I enjoy a good laugh as much as anyone, my friend, but – don’t make me laugh.”

“Laugh if you like, but my offer is serious.”

The slaver eyed him closely; returned to his mug. “We can discuss it tonight. If you continue to be out of your mind.”

Anaconda raised a forefinger. “That reminds me,” he said. “I want to take the little pawn – er, this young buck here – on a tour of the Black Hole —”

“Are you joking?—” “WHAT?” burst out simultaneously from the Slaver and Piranha. Both subsided, glaring at the robot.

“My facilities are not for the likes of that!” snorted Grouper. “Do you want him to get crushed?”

Anaconda turned to grin at Piranha’s gape of increasing alarm. “As I was saying before, I wish to find him a proper body slave. We’ll check out the merchandise in person.”

Grouper chuckled. “Oh, is that all? No problem there. But it’ll still cost you.”

Anaconda raised his cup cheerfully. “I don’t mind. See, it’s a celebration. Today he becomes a certified pirate.”

Piranha was staring from one of them to the other. “Anaconda—”

“Now don’t spoil the moment with your tiresome gloom, First Mate. Here. Emulate your betters and take a drink.” He thrust the cup into Piranha’s hand.

Piranha put it down. “I’m not setting foot on that slave ship,” he said.

“I think you’d find it quite fascinating,” Anaconda murmured.

“You can say that again,” chuckled Grouper. “At least, he might not, but you – Why, my dear Captain, you yourself haven’t seen it since it was renovated. Can’t wait to show off the improvements. You’ll corrode with envy.”

“Just what have you done with it? It’s not even recognizable.”

“Ah, so true, my dear fellow! The superb technologies of Binskrig—”

Piranha, settling uneasily back down in his seat, tried not to hear their talk. Side deals? Going on board that slave ship? But this wasn’t the time or place to have it out with Anaconda.

The smoking, coiling sound of those voices, covertly duelling – underneath the surface cordiality, each was surely doing his best to put something over on the other – not that he cared, but – but the sound of treachery itself set loose the nausea in him that had been rising in surges all evening, set it rippling, turned him pale –

Enough, enough, enough.

Facing away from them, he could not avoid glimpsing the battlefield. Oh, yes, that. Here he was, he and Anaconda and that abominable human, sending their little jabs at each other, busying themselves with their little games and rivalries, while down there a thousand living beings flailed in a bloody struggle to the death over a ditch. Killing and dying whether anyone noticed or not.

The nausea, the rage – he clung to the chair arms, held still.

He had been on this ship for months. He knew most of the pirates by name, and many by character. He knew a lot of the slaves on board by sight, some by name, a few of them quite well – ones he worked with regularly. He knew nearly every corner of the vessel outside of the engine areas and the robot section. He had made himself part of this place; not only because he must in order to survive, but because he couldn’t help it. He could not live and work with people day after day without – at least to some degree taking them on. Being who he was.

Being who he was. Which was what?

The nausea gripped him fiercely. The sound of the battle grew preternaturally, hypnotically loud, drowning out everything – the low sly voices beside him, the roaring of the mob – then itself was swamped by the torrent of revulsion that thundered over him. The agony, the horror, the pain, the desperation, it engulfed him, slammed him down him like tidal waves. With a gasp he jerked forward; then froze again in the chair. The – the boxes, eternity of concrete darkness, radiating agony, suffocating —

***

“Now, Piranha!” boomed Anaconda’s voice. His fist, a metal ball, shoved against Piranha’s side in a painful simulacrum of comradeship.

Whether it was the rum, the betting, his dealing (or double-dealing), or simply the effect of his universal triumphs, the Captain of the Insurrection was at his most grandiosely expansive. It was unsettling enough to see him grinning broadly like a naked human skull; this outright joviality was terrifying. “Time for a drink!”

Ignoring him, Piranha slid down in his seat. Anaconda grabbed him and sat him up straight – though less painfully this time, almost playfully.

“After all, whom do we have but you to thank for this entertainment, the gift of this bountiful harvest which you yourself provided!”

“Bountiful – You mean all those captives?”

“Why of course! The best haul in years! We owe you so much!”

Piranha’s face had no expression whatsoever. “I brought in as many as you told me to bring in.”

“Indeed you did, and when has that ever happened before? You did a spectacular job, First Mate. It would be petty, even ungrateful, of me to deny it. And yet I don’t see you enjoying this superb spectacle. Oh, now don’t roll your eyes at me. Such appalling cynicism while these poor brave fellows are in the midst of a struggle for freedom!”

“Freedom?” said Piranha. “Is–is that the ‘benefit’ you were talking about? They can go free?”

The sounds of clashing swords, cries of fear and rage and pain took hold of him again, physically, he trembled.

“Why, of course,” Anaconda said. “That was the deal. That they could earn their freedom. All of them left standing at the end of the battle, if they belong to the winning team, will be allowed to stay on the ship as pirates, instead of being sold as slaves. The losing team, and those too damaged to become pirates, will go with my friend the Angel of Mercy here.”

“Ah,” Piranha said. “So. Freedom.” His vision spinning, he sat up straighter. The sickness surged.

“Yes,” added the Slaver, complacently. “That’s part of the penalty I pay for the pleasure of attending your master’s fine entertainment. Always getting stuck with a passel of unsaleable cripples. But, well, I do have a duty towards the poor helpless creatures; and I can still get a decent amount of work out of them taking care of things on the Black Hole. It does save using up good slaves.”

“You see?” Anaconda grinned at Piranha. “Isn’t this a fine solution? Some of those captives will become pirates! And the rest of the survivors of the battle won’t be killed! I should think even you would approve.”

Piranha closed his eyes. Then opened them, fiercely. “Just incidentally,” he said, “do any of them ever survive?”

“Certainly. You might have a few among your own men who became pirates that way.”

“And this is the deal you’re offering them.”

“Why yes,” said Anaconda. He grinned wider. “Don’t you think I offer spectacularly good deals?”

Piranha didn’t answer.

Anaconda leaned back again in his chair, still grinning. “Perhaps I should be a merchant, after all. Though it would take some serious work to catch up with that level of sheer raw greed.”

“Oh,” said Grouper, placidly, “You do all right, Anaconda.”

“Now,” Anaconda went on to Piranha, ignoring irrelevant comments, “Take this cup. Hold it. Drink.”

Piranha held onto the cup, as Anaconda was blocking the tray, but he didn’t drink. “Why?” he said. “Why are you so anxious for me to drink? What does it matter?”

“There’s no added drug or poison, if that’s what’s bothering you. You can have some of the blatherskite’s over there if you’re suspicious. He’s got plenty.”

“I’m – It’s not that. I just —” Piranha looked at the Boss with genuine perplexity. “What are you trying to do?”

Anaconda looked back at him, saying nothing. Flecks of harsh blue light, reflected from the battlefield, played fitfully over that inhuman yet expressive metallic face with its inscrutable self-lit eyes.

And for a moment, it was as though Piranha had never seen him before. As though he himself had just fallen into his chair, yanked from some other unknown existence, and was now staring at a thing that could not be imagined. With surreal detachment he saw a machine, an artifice, a made thing, crafted by beings of great talent and skill and undoubted malignity; something dark and brilliant, magnificent, casually menacing, with the angular beauty and repulsion and fascinating, unfathomable alienness of a giant insect.

Then, with a shudder, it was not a machine; it was a face, the face of the Boss – alive, aware – only too aware – those pupilless glowing eyes aimed at him with knowing, mocking, victorious amusement.

“You’re being difficult, Piranha. As usual. But I forgive you. I know you can’t help it; you’re just a natural killjoy. But between the Retailer of Creation over there and my piratical self, we’re going to reform you. Now hold onto your drink and enjoy the grand finale. This is a celebration, and you’re coming with us tonight to continue the party after the show. No – no talk. You’re coming.”

With that, he turned back to the Slaver and was instantly deep in some complex negotiation.

Left to himself, Piranha took a long breath. He put down the drink. He had some trouble getting it onto the table, his hand kept missing.

The battle was indeed reaching a climax, as the war-bots closed in on the frantic human remnant, crushing them closer together, harrying them into a last desperate attack. He took another tremulous, painful breath. Anaconda and Grouper were upping their bets. The robot officers in the front of the stand were screaming like humans. The humans in the auditorium were screaming like the robots, laughing and cheering. The audience hooted as stumbling fighters caromed onto each others’ weapons or even their own. Cries could now and again be heard amidst the roar of the pirate audience and the chugging and clanging of the war-bots.

Piranha glanced at Anaconda. The Boss had paused in his sparring with the Slaver and was contemplating the battle. His metal body lounged back in the chair, goblet dangling in a three-pointed grip, the picture of languid suavity. But his gaze never wavered from the carnage below.

Oh yes. The sophisticate. The aristocrat. Whatever his fastidious distaste for the uncouth Slaver, for the howling rabble he commanded, he was no different from any of them. Pirates, all.

Piranha sank deeper into his seat. The battle followed him. He squeezed his eyes tight. He tried subtly to pull his hat down over his ears. Cowardly, yes, but to hell with that.

From somewhere, a green-blue planet flickered past him. He took a slight shocked breath. The planet wavered, almost blown out like a candle.

Inside his darkness, he sank, continued to sink, like – a stone thrown into Volcano Lake, the hollow mountain filled with water that went to depths that some said reached to the centre of the world. Water so clear you could follow the stone down for miles, miles, until it was swallowed into black shadows...

No. He was here. Drowning in his own black shadows. He was here, where he belonged. With these shrieking, cheering brutes of primal urges, creatures lusting for battle and sex and drunkenness, jabbering and slobbering over cruelty, gleefully unconscious of anything outside their own nervous systems. They were his. He was theirs.

Little Piranha didn’t like it? What difference did that make?

It was stirring, gathering, building. Under the swelling nausea he was suffocating. His side, where he’d been clawed repeatedly by the Boss, ached with a mocking pain. (Odd how it was persisting.)

What difference did it make? What difference? What he felt, what he did? What these gibbering monsters did? What anyone did?

Their biggest haul ever because of him. Which was what he had promised Anaconda, wasn’t it?

The little guy. The little guy had saved his planet. At least, given it a reprieve... He’d made a deal. And what–who was the price? Those pulingly pitiful creatures struggling down there? Wouldn’t they have been captured anyway? Might not even more of them have been killed without Piranha to keep a fierce hand restraining the pirates? More killed and less captured... More village burning, more pirates killed and injured, more destruction everywhere and... less profit for Anaconda and the Slaver...

And if the little guy hadn’t done it – who would be the slaves being sold to the Slaver at this moment? And the planet of “conventionally attractive” beings would still have been invaded, the pirates murdering, burning, looting pillaging, raping at will. Or some other such planet. And —

So it was all fine, then? Everything fine, no problem?

In his depths, something volcanic, painfully clutching him, redhot metal claws deep in his body. A surge of horror and protest and outrage and loathing —

He clamped it down.

Loathing? Of whom? Anaconda? Who had merely accepted the offer, in a spirit of sardonic experiment, of the little fool he had defeated? The Slaver, that legitimate businessman? Or the people – whoever they were, wherever they were – who bought slaves from the Slaver? Who created the Slaver?

Or – the damned idiots in front of him obediently murdering each other as he watched? Why didn’t they turn on their captors – force them to do the killing? Why did they kill each other? Why didn’t they kill themselves? Why hadn’t they killed him? Why did they kill each other? Why —

He was panting quietly under his hat, holding it back, holding it back, holding it back.

Hadn’t he decided to make a deal? Was there any number of people, any number of planets he would not sacrifice to protect that little blue-green planet? – which none of them had harmed, which they didn’t even know existed. Thousands of them, here, now, killing and dying and bleeding and suffering because of him, because of his preoccupations – and to serve his purposes he was going to put more and more of them to kill and die and suffer and be sold to gods only knew what fate —

The rage surged in him, erupted throughout his body, engulfed him like lava. Dizzy, gasping, shaky, he slumped in the chair.

Rage, despair, sickness, oh poor little Piranha.

He lay there, silent, burning in the lava, sheltered by the hat but unable to escape the multitudinous sounds, more than sounds, the sensations, the – persons – of the pirates, the robots, the battle (oh, every individual being on that field, for wasn’t he a god now? capriciously determining the fates of innocent, helpless victims? participating in their defeat from safety and afar?); the rumbling voices of the Slaver’s minions; the stertorous, asthmatic gasping of the massive beast himself; and the quiet, penetrating metallic chuckle of that thing next to him.

That thing? Who in this place wasn’t a thing?

His only certainty in all of this was that he would be killing and burning and enslaving till the end of his existence. That he could count on.

And he had known that. When he played that little game, took it on – the role of pirate. He’d known that perfectly well. It wasn’t like he was surprised. It wasn’t like— it wasn’t like—

He wanted to fling himself out the window, fly to that stage, run or be run through by swords, he didn’t care which, he wanted violence. The wave upon wave of crashing pain, fear, and horror from the battle, the vile joy of the pirates, the urbane viciousness of Anaconda, the complacency of that Slaver, everything that had cascaded over him, pummelled him, suffocated him all evening, it all surged over him in a mad vortex of hate. He couldn’t begin to understand it, much less suppress it, it went far beyond comprehension, it was mindless, purely physical, a hatred so savage he clawed away from it in terror even as it swept him under, drowning him in loathing.

Loathing for everything around him, for everyone, everything in the universe; and most especially, loathing for Piranha that choked, swelled his mind and body till he thought he would black out, burst, die.

He lay gripping the chair, gasping; furious; paralyzed.

There were tears in his eyes. God damn it, tears.

To those gods-abandoned buffoons slaughtering away at each other for pirate entertainment, to their foul spectators just as ready to kill or be killed, laughing at it all, to the tens of thousands of slaves right now being packed away and delivered to some unknown ghastly fate, to the untold agonized ghosts boxed in an eternity of blackness – to all the planets and ships and sun systems that were yet to be attacked, the millions and billions and trillions of them, what the oxidated rust-streaked difference did it make? Everything had happened, everything would happen. Tears? Filthy, vile, brutal pirate, murderer, torturer, slaver – in the name of the gods the robots didn’t know they had, what difference did that make? What difference did anything make?

His eyes snapped open. He sat up straight, with a fierce huff of breath.

He snatched up the cup of rum. Its fumes burned his nose, his eyes. The nausea, the boil of rage and hate, it surged in him, shivered his vision, vibrated the cup in his hand.

He gripped the cup hard, held it still. Took a slow, snarling breath.

Then, eyes once again shut, in a single long gulp he swallowed it all.

Description
Finally managed to get my head functional enough to cobble together another chapter. With many, many, many thanks to Mewitti , who helped me revive and keep going - and who also contributed that magnificent cover. (I feel like it sums up the chapter so well you probably don’t need to wade through all my words, unless you enjoy that kind of masochism.)

***

PIRANHA
Chapter 14: The Black Hole, Part 4c:

The preparations on the stage were rapid, surprisingly organized, and alarming. Dozens of small repair robots and muscular slaves had swarmed out like an army of ants at a fallen sandwich, and with much screeching of power tools were rapidly disassembling what Piranha had thought was a solid metal wall at the back of the stage. This revealed a vast open space like an outdoor game playing field. The terrain sloped gently upward, away from the audience, so that its full length was easily visible. It seemed to have a rough, dirt-like surface, with a shallow ditch running down the center from the front to the back of what could hardly any longer be called a “stage.” The whole field must have filled a full quarter of the length of the enormous ship, just about the depth of the auditorium itself. At the far end of that landscape, there was another solid metal wall.

On the other side of that wall, hard though it was to grasp, Piranha knew that there was another equally huge space; the gigantic docking area through which throngs of slaves were at that exact moment being loaded onto the Black Hole.

Now troops of war robots were arriving, some ten on each side – the enormous, lumbering, laser cannon-bearing gunbots, triggering old mental shadows that involuntarily wrenched a low growl out of Piranha. These tank-like monsters lined up at intervals along the left and right sides of the stage, facing each other from the far edges of the field.

As they rolled thunderously on their treads into view, a cheer rose up from the audience. It got louder as other robots began to emerge from the wings, lighter but still huge warrior robots carrying big arm-held weapons, energy cannons or rapid shell-firing guns. They arranged themselves around the stage in pairs or trios between the giant gunbots, also facing inwards towards the field, standing stiffly like soldiers, their weapons held poised and ready.

Piranha stared at the field, the army, the audience. He turned to Anaconda, in the seat on his left.

“What is this?” he asked. “Is there going to be a war?”

“A war?” Anaconda’s long, thin, matte black face turned, focusing the hard yellow light of his eyes on him. “A war? I do hope, Piranha, that you don’t mean you long to see your metallic brethren, your fellow pirates, your very own loyal subordinates, massacring each other?”

Piranha shrugged slightly, turned away again. “Not a war, then.”

“Not the way you’re thinking.” Anaconda returned to his cup of rum. The complacent little smirk in his voice sent a cold chill skittering down Piranha’s back.

The pirate audience had for gradually fallen into a slow, rhythmic, obscene, half-humorous, half-ominous chant, all the pirates shouting and stamping together. As time went on and on, and nothing stirred onstage, the chant grew gradually less humorous, more ominous; the hall shaking with slower, louder, heavier stomps from thousands of united boots, reverberating with simultaneous roars from thousands of throats. Piranha, his first-mate reflexes itching, shifted uneasily in his chair. Anaconda, however, seemed entirely unperturbed at what looked like an incipient riot.

Then, from the front of the stage to the back, a line of strong ceiling lights snapped on with the harsh blue-white glare so often favoured by the robots. The auditorium lights dimmed; and a deep howl of joy filled the place as onto the vast game field the entrance of the players began.

They were humans, of course. Hundreds of them, many hundreds, streaming onto the field from both sides of the stage like swarms of ants between the towering, motionless gunbots. Humans, mostly men, mostly young; shambling one after the other in a disorganized, ungainly mass. They were dressed in simple, archaic, ill-fitting armour – face-protecting helmets, round hand-held shields, arm and shin plates, breastplates – the group on the left in blue-grey steel, those on the right in bronze. All of them gripped, however awkwardly, weapons, primitive ones – swords, pikes, daggers. Pushed forward by those behind, they advanced awkwardly, some with their heads down, some stumbling, some jerking and darting or skittering feverishly like unruly horses, frantic but not quite daring or able to bolt. A few, only a few, held themselves upright, alert, wary, ready. As the playing field filled up with them, they bunched into two masses confronting each other across the shallow center ditch.

The game players. The game pieces. Piranha stared at them. Where had they come from? Who were they? Not pirates. But besides the pirates, the only other humans on board were —

Slaves. And captives. Armed and armoured they might be, but they were no army. These were not warriors. Anyone kidnapped from a planet who had ever shown himself a fighter would already have been put in a – in a concrete box. These were what was left.

As they filed onto the field, the yelling of the audience redoubled, multiplied, erupted into a cacophony of bellowing, stamping, and throwing of metal bottles, some at the stage. One hit a “soldier,” almost knocking him down, and the straggling line of captives wavered, fragmented, fell apart, bodies caroming into their neighbours in confusion and swelling panic.

More bottles were thrown at the stage, and Piranha, first-mate instincts fully roused, leapt to his feet, ready to launch himself through a window. But several of the huge gun-carrying robots in the wings came down to the front of the stage, glowering at audience and captives both. The captives froze, crept back into place; and the audience, laughing and jeering, returned to hurling only noise.

The noise was violent enough. It went on and on, minute after minute, while the two armies were arraying themselves many rows deep all down the length of the field on both sides. The volume was stunning, brain-pulverizing; shivering the officers’ box on its sturdy pylons and reverberating inside it as though the air molecules themselves were slamming back and forth with the force of heavy baseballs.

“Close the windows! Damn it, shut those swamprustblotched discharged windows!” In a fractional lull in the auditory onslaught, Anaconda’s amplified voice finally broke through enough that the two or three officers sitting next to a still-open window shook out of their sonic coma enough to screw it shut. The barrage of sound didn’t cease, but it was dampened down below the pain threshold.

Piranha sagged back in his chair, eyes closed, his body vibrating like instrument strings. It was only partly from the noise, although in all his life he had never conceived that so much biologically-created sound could exist.

A tall, broad, smoky grey robot wearing a rakishly red, gold-trimmed pirate hat was now striding out to the front of the field to stand at the dividing ditch, facing into the audience. As he raised his hands, the audience’s thousands of individual screams massed into a solid wall.

The grey robot could fractionally be heard at moments bawling into the audience, which didn’t diminish its volume for a moment. It appeared he was laying out the rules for the combat, not that anyone seemed to care. From his arm gestures, it looked as though the basic idea was for one team to cross the ditch to occupy the other team’s territory.

Anaconda was looking at his first mate, slumped motionless under the shelter of his hat. He picked up the hat and took hold of Piranha’s head, turning it so their eyes met.

“Piranha. First Mate. Thinking deep thoughts?”

Piranha sat up; politely nipped his hat out of the Boss’s hand. “I’m deeply moved by the audience participation.”

“Oh, don’t try to buffalo me. You’re lying there reeking with egotistical gloom while those brave young fellows are marching out onto the field of battle. No joy whatsoever! Yet all these months you’ve been awash in puling pity for the creatures. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. So now, why so cruel? Why so unfeeling? Why no delight at their opportunity?”

Piranha frowned. “Their opportunity.”

Grouper, on the other side of Anaconda, was grinning broadly, his flat little eyes peering out from among the ample rounds of his face.

Anaconda permitted himself a small smile as well. “You’ll be ashamed of your spoil-sporting attitude when you understand what’s going on. Don’t you see this is for their benefit?”

“Benefit?” Piranha repeated, blankly.

“Yes, of course,” Anaconda began; then was drowned out by an earsplitting, high-pitched screech as if from a gigantic steam whistle, the massive simultaneous blast of all the energy cannons carried by the gunbots firing into the air (apparently short-range charges, since the ceiling collapse Piranha momentarily expected didn’t happen), and a fresh roar from the audience that once again rattled the windows.

“The start signal,” Anaconda noted, superfluously.

It was the signal indeed, but after so much buildup and so much noise, all that followed was an anticlimactic silence. The two armies facing each other across the little ditch made no move. They wavered in place, gripping their weapons uncertainly; looking anxiously around, as though hoping at any moment someone would admit this was all a joke and they could go home.

Even the audience halted for a moment, suspended in ear-ringing silence. Anaconda, Grouper, the officers, the pirate masses out in the auditorium, everyone stilled, all fixated on the battlefield. Piranha, frozen under his hat, could not breathe; but he too was unable not to watch.

The pause went on; five seconds, ten seconds.

Then, with a thunderous discharge, gun-carrying robots on each side of the stage lifted their massive weapons and fired directly into crowd in front of them.

And in the next moment the surviving players surged forward in two huge boiling mobs and in a moment were flailing at each other in frantic battle.

And the moment after that, the auditorium was again engulfed with the cataclysmic yelling, laughing, cheering, stomping, and howling of the gratified pirates.

If closing the windows had abated the assault from the auditorium, it was no protection against the chaos occurring inside the booth. The robot officers at the front whooped and jumped, shoving each other, waving little bronze and steel pennants, occasionally letting a friendly fist fly at a neighbour, and bouncing on their benches like excited five-ton children. Every seat in the officer’s box jarred with their enthusiasm, from their benches at the front, to the rear where the Slaver and Piranha sat on either side of the Captain. The Slaver’s men, a tight group at the left side of the box, glared at the robots, gripping their armrests, a few turning greenish with the subtle jiggling and swaying. Piranha himself felt a trifle seasick, although not so much from that cause.

He couldn’t take his eyes off the combat. He had been on many a battlefield himself, but never seen one from this god-like perspective.

The gods must have strong stomachs.

Battle? Gods, demons, and trees, this wasn’t a battle, it was a series of ghastly accidents. It was a floundering massacre. Whose idea was it to hand so many infants so many sharp objects?

And who had brought them all in to be massacred?

He gripped the chair arms, held on, as a slow tide of nausea lapped at him. The noise, the relentless emotions surging through the auditorium, the oceanlike swells of lust and sadism and terror and pain, he was drowning. It tightened, clenched at him like a fist, a claw in his abdomen, it twisted. He cringed.

And a volcanic blast of rage seared through him.

And vanished. Involuntarily he collapsed in his chair. For a moment he didn’t have the strength to breathe.

He knew Anaconda’s sardonic gaze was on him.

He took a breath at last. And another.

***

With the battle well underway, the atmosphere throughout the auditorium had turned festive. For the robot pirates, this final act was clearly the climax of the evening. Beatings, torture, sex – all good enough light entertainment, but this was the real thing. The intensity of their joy in the fighting was outdone only by their businesslike earnestness in inventing ever-evolving wagers over each tiny detail of the game.

The human pirates out in the auditorium were not much behind in their enthusiasm, and not at all in their betting. In the officers’ box, too, the slaver’s men – although like Grouper devoting more attention to their goblets and mugs of rum now than during the previous acts – watched with interest, commenting and laughing, and were just about as busy gambling as the pirates.

Grouper himself, still a trifle moist and flushed after his recent aesthetic experiences, and Anaconda, a small cold smile on his hard face, also put their wildly contrasting heads together, making, unmaking, agreeing, disputing on bets.

“Let me refill your mug, my transgalactic fleshpot. Now what do you say – 150 goldbiks?”

Grouper paused in his rum absorption to snicker. “150? 150? You long short circuit, is that what you call a bet?”

“All right then, 300.”

“Pah! 300? 500!”

“You want to risk that much? Very well, 500 then.”

“What? Hey, what do you mean? What are you up to, you – miscalculating machine?”

“I merely wished to ensure you have enough gold left to pay for the survivors after you lose.”

“You are a quaint old gadget, Captain. All the same, I’ll say 500 on the Bronze. I do always favor the Bronze. I don’t know why, since they invariably lose.”

“Nonsense! You know my team doesn’t win every time. This a fair fight!”

“Yes... I believe you did lose that one year, what was it, ‘205, when the Steel somehow ran out of men. Always wondered what caused that miraculous accident.”

“I’m sure you couldn’t possibly have any idea.”

“Are you trying to suggest something? What knowledge could I possibly have? Whereas you have every opportunity —”

“Do you imagine I rig it somehow? Are you joking? Those pathetic little organic bodies? You can’t enhance those enough to notice!”

Grouper snorted into his mug. “Can’t enhance? Don’t try to bamboozle me, I deal in bodies.”

Anaconda leaned back, his tight smile widening a trifle. “Very well then. Let’s switch sides. You take Steel this time.”

“What? What are you up to? I certainly will not!”

“Fine, don’t then.”

“What? That’s it, we are switching sides! I’m taking the Steel! Have you got something in your hand there? Some switch somewhere? What is that, a remote control? Just what game are you playing, you clockwork swindler?”

Anaconda held out his long, elegant, empty hands, grinning more. “A remote control! Such a good idea! If only I’d thought of it. How can a poor simple robot hope to keep up with the boundless duplicity of humans?”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Poor simple robot. I’m sticking with the Bronze. And I’m keeping an eye on you.”

Anaconda lounged back in his chair, holding his brass goblet aloft in a delicate grip. “Most flattering. In the meantime, a bet on the number of survivors?”

There was an imperceptible tension, though, in the angle of his smooth metal frame that made Piranha, in the chair next to him, inch subtly a little further away.

Grouper did not detach his face from his mug of rum. “I say... 27 of mine, 30 of yours. –But you can’t really expect me to believe you don’t have such a thing.”

Over the rim of his own drink, Anaconda fixed his pale eyes on the Slaver. “I say 20 and 20. Raise the odds for each additional gap. –You mean a controller?” He chuckled; a small cold clicking sound that chillingly penetrated the ambient noise (not to mention Piranha’s fevered skull). “How like your mentality, body-snatcher.” That freezing little laugh again. “You think that to command obedience from my pirates I would need anything so crude?”

“Pirates? Foo, a little gold will bribe those. But the other humans – all those slaves running loose in your ship – what about them, eh? How do you manage them?”

For a few minutes Anaconda lounged back in his seat, swinging his goblet lightly in his tapered fingers. Then, abruptly, in a voice acid enough to etch metal, the robot said, “It’s not really about controllers, is it, chum? It’s that particular bee again, isn’t it? The one you can’t seem to flush out of your bonnet?”

Grouper took a copious swig, rolled his eyes. “There you go again.”

“That’s what I was thinking about you.”

“Oh, boshtosh. In my position, I do have a certain responsibility, after all.”

“Great grinding gaskets, your position? A wholesale biological accessory distributor?”

Grouper swallowed another mugful, gave a haughty sniff. “Surely you realize how fortunate you are that I deal with you at all, my dear Captain. I do have certain – scruples. Yet I must also acknowledge my duty —”

Resting his hard elbow on the chair arm and his sharp-angled jaw on the upraised hand, Anaconda murmured, “Your duty. Of course. Redeeming the poor sad things from my evil clutches.”

“Now, now, Captain. Not evil. Can a machine be evil?”

Anaconda raised his eyebrows in mock inquiry.

The Slaver smiled, generous, condescending. “After all, evil, as much as good, requires a soul.”

“Bingo.” Sardonically, Anaconda grinned. He pushed a metal bottle of rum at the human. “Do have another, my scrupulous, soul-salving ambassador of the Incontrovertible Pontification or whatever it is. A man of such celestial morality deserves not only infinite profits, but another drink. Help yourself.”

Celestial or not, Grouper promptly did. Then sank into his chair with expansive comfort, waving the half-empty mug. “Nothing personal, you know. No offence, old thing?”

“None taken, I assure you. After all, I am a thing.”

“Think about it,” the Slaver went on. “How can a thing own a living creature? An inanimate object possess something animate? Does that make sense?”

Anaconda did not make a sound, and nothing visibly changed in his attitude; but Piranha, abruptly alarmed, lunged from his seat. The metal hand snatched him out of the air.

“But let’s not forget this thing. He should know. First Mate, is it possible for a robot to own a living creature?”

Piranha, motionless in the clutch of those sharp fingers, made no reply. Anaconda shook his head.

“No opinions on philosophy. Hardly surprising.” With no more effort than if he held a doll, he brought Piranha close to him, smiling mirthlessly into his face. “But you can manage an opinion on sports, surely? We have a bet going, the Scrupulous Ambassador and I, and nothing charges up the game like bringing in some brainless, random element of chance. So tell me, what’s your bet? Which team will win?”

Partly the pain of that metallic grip on his already sore trunk, partly terminal disgust, put a little extra venom into Piranha’s answer. “Win? That’s easy. They all lose.”

“Pah! That’s no bet at all.” Anaconda dropped Piranha back into his seat. “First Mate, you need a drink.”

“I’m not thirsty.”

“Neither am I, but I don’t let trifles like that stop me. Now, here is a goblet for your very own. Take a swig.”

“Anaconda —”

“And that’s Boss. Or Captain, if you must be formal. This really isn’t a formal occasion, though, Piranha, you have my permission to call me Boss.”

“Oh, lord,” Piranha muttered.

“No, that’s for the Minister of Grace over there.”

“That stuff turns my stomach.”

“Again, I don’t let such trivialities get in the way. At least I wouldn’t if I had a stomach – and I’m not so sure you do, for that matter. Sometimes, Piranha, I think you’re only pretending to be human. Now let’s see you take a little dainty sip, just to get started. Come now. Your men look up to you for leadership! You want to set them an example, don’t you? You’re First Mate, you have to look good in front of them!”

Piranha, despite a multiplicity of sarcastic answers biting at his lips, was having trouble getting out any kind of response. “Looking good. Right. My one purpose in life.”

“Up until today, frankly, I did in fact suspect that to be the case.” Anaconda lowered his angular face to stare directly into Piranha’s. “That is, until you dragged yourself in here directly after going through some kind of heavy combat. You’re a disgrace.” He sat back in his chair again, picking up his goblet, then paused and looked at Piranha again. “But perhaps that’s it? Is the little slavelet not taking proper care of your clothes? As First Mate, if you had any concept of dignity, you would make sure you had an appropriate attendant. – Ah! Now that is a good idea! And this is the perfect opportunity. The Black Hole is right here, we can get you something decent. That one you have now isn’t even second-rate. I’m surprised you didn’t pick out something more attractive a long time ago.”

He leaned over towards Grouper, jabbed him suddenly with a sharp elbow out of a mild reverie into which the human had settled.

“Hey! Where—”

“Rumpot, wake up! You could be drinking!”

With a haughty twitch, Grouper heaved himself straight. “I am neither asleep nor drunk. I can hic hold my liquor.”

“You’re certainly holding half my yearly personal supply. But never mind. I want to consult with you; this is your area of expertise. My First Mate here is in need of an upgrade —”

“Seems more your area, not mine.” Grouper peered around the Captain at what seemed to be a smallish pile of dark cloth and a hat. “He’s bio-life, isn’t he? Even a robot should know you can’t replace chips —” He eyed the pile dubiously – from which a nose and two glaring eyes abruptly emerged, so that he pulled sharply back.

Anaconda was grinning. “No, no, my itinerant dealer in delights, you misunderstand me. He needs an upgraded body servant. What have you got in stock?”

“For him?” blurted Grouper. “You think I deal in job lots and factory seconds? Nothing but first-quality merchandise – far over his head!”

“Now, I know he’s not tall, but I thought you might have some suitable miniatures —”

“Oh, Anaconda —” Piranha’s dry, deadpan voice murmured suddenly, close to the likely location of the Captain’s hearing sensor, “— By the way. That bet you mentioned? I think you’re losing.”

The robot’s head turned towards the stage. His yellow eyes flashed red. Then, brushing both Piranha and Grouper roughly aside, he lunged onto his feet and over the next row of seats and strode rapidly down the side aisle to the huge window at the front of the box.

On the benches just in front of that window, any little bronze flags being waved by the robot officers vanished rather miraculously as he strode up. Other than that, the vivacity of their celebration didn’t diminish much.

“Great fight! Er – Isn’t it, Boss?”

Glaring out the window, he ignored them.

At the center of the battlefield, the chaotic attacks of the Steel were crumbling under the advance of a distinctive group of Bronze gladiators, two heads taller than the rest, whose coordinated assault ate through Steel combatants like a patch of antibiotic erasing bacteria in a Petri dish. The Steel players in their path turned to flee, shoving backwards into the mass of panicked bodies behind them, slashing wildly to escape in any other direction, unconscious of whether they attacked the other team or their own. Other Bronze fighters poured clumsily onto the Steel side of the field as the Steel players fled, chasing and cutting down them down with no resistance. The battle, which up till a few minutes ago had not much favoured one side or the other, was looking like it might be over quite suddenly.

Glaring down at the rout, Anaconda pressed the invisible microphone switch on his right forearm and snarled into it. However, his words this time did not blast throughout the auditorium. “Gargara! Gargara! What the corrosion are you at? Reinforcements! Reinforcements! – Yes, to Steel, you idiot, to Steel!” He paused for a moment, glaring at the knot of Bronze fighters as they toppled everything around them. Into the microphone he added, “Those ringers! ... Those ringers, who are they? — And where are the slashdrabbled reinforcements?” He snapped off the microphone, muttering. “Filthy colloidal smears! Feckless gene-buckets!”

At the same moment, a fresh roar rose from the spectators as a new batch of Steel tumbled awkwardly onto the field. They were a ragtag lot, poorly armed and armoured, clutching weapons at odd angles as though they had just been shoved into their hands. They looked bewildered and disoriented, some even facing the wrong way as they were shoved in from offstage, but they at least helped block the retreat of the rest of the disorganized Steel faction. Indeed, the Steel side of the field, occupied by an almost even mix of Steel and Bronze fighters, was now so tightly packed that there was scarcely room to lift a sword; making the battle more desperate than ever.

Anaconda watched, growling. He muttered again into the microphone. “Those ringers! You saw them – huge brutes! Who are they? ... You don’t? ... You didn’t? ... Never mind. Fix it. And keep it fixed – if you hope to remain Insurrection crew. Got it?” He turned off the microphone, still muttering.

It was less than a minute before one of the massive tank-like warbots had dropped a shell neatly onto the group of giant gladiators; and a few moments later, one more, to pick off a couple more that had been missed, along with a few nearby fighters of both teams. Shortly thereafter, another large batch of Steel recruits were thrust onto the field, this time mostly females – some without armour, some even without weapons – crowding the Bronze fighters, along with many Steel, back across the ditch by sheer numbers.

The audience’s howling had taken on notes of savage glee, outrage, ironic delight – but not, it would seem, surprise. Large amounts of money were changing hands throughout the auditorium.

From his outlook at the window the Captain of the Insurrection watched for a few moments more, then turned and stalked back to his seat.

He paused as he reached his chair to look back at the battle again. The two sides had already evened out, the numbers of fighters had been thinned to the point that pikes and swords were again in full play, and the remaining combatants were floundering and tripping over the dead and wounded, raising much laughter from the audience.

Anaconda gave an approving grunt. Tossing equally contemptuous glances at both the Slaver and his first mate, he sat down.

Grouper looked up casually from his mug as the robot thumped into the chair next to him. “Something up, old boy?

“Nothing much. Seems a batch of – pirates, apparently – sneaked onto the field somehow, throwing off the odds – can you imagine! Hopelessly inept game managers. But all taken care of now.”

Grouper sagged a bit in his chair. “Ah. Unfortunate.”

“Such a shame, just when the Steel were winning! Now the Bronze have the advantage!”

Grouper brightened fractionally. “Oh? You mean he – they —”

“Would that surprise you, my old companion in crime?”

“Crime? I beg your pardon! You, my good sir, for all your snooty airs, are a pirate after all; but I am a legitimate businessman, and don’t you forget it!” He brought the mug to his face again – but let out a squeak, as Anaconda with a flick of his hand sent it flying off to the side of the room, towards the Slaver’s lavishly ornamented retinue of merchants. The mug clattered to the floor after just missing one high-hatted head and spraying rum over much cloth of gold and jewellery.

With emphatic dignity, Grouper leaned back in his chair, looking off into the distance with a bland, forbearing gaze.

“My goodness,” Anaconda purred. “How very clumsy. How very clumsy we are today, aren’t we?”

Grouper sniffed. He gestured imperiously to one of the merchants, who grumpily picked up the fallen mug to bring to him. Receiving the cup with great composure from his ungracious but silent subordinate, he sat back and refilled it from the bottle beside him.

“You should get your sensors serviced, my old electroconfederate. Your hand control is indeed abnormally clumsy. Furthermore, in spite of what you say, I can easily see that the Steel are winning.”

Anaconda lounged back in his chair. The fingers of his right hand tapped lightly against the armrest; long, thin, hard, slightly pointed fingers, looking more and more like animated ice picks. “Nothing more to say, my master of cellular shuffling?”

Grouper took a swig. “Not likely.”

“Not at all disappointed?”

Grouper eyed him coolly. “Disappointed, Captain? Disappointment is for those whose happiness, in this sad universe of trials, depends on material things. I am not so deluded.”

Anaconda, as he had before, rested his left elbow on the chair arm, laid his angular head on the upraised hand, still tapping the fingers of the right. “How comforting, to be so well sustained by your disdain of material things. And so well able to cope with clumsiness —” Those pick-like fingers momentarily throttled the chair arm. But then, decisively, he relaxed, his body shifting.

He took up his own goblet, smiled. “My venerable colleague, in the spirit of sportsmanship I feel a – responsibility. To soften your defeat.”

Grouper raised an eyebrow. “Do you now.”

Anaconda leaned back with an expansive gesture. “How about a reverse bet? If the Steel win, you’ll get an extra fifty slaves from my personal collection.”

Grouper gave a dry chuckle. “You mean you still have some rubbish you haven’t managed to pawn off on me?”

“Nonsense. These are a special complement I was planning to retain on board. But for your benefit, I will sacrifice them.”

“And what would you extort in return, my strangely generous Captain?”

Anaconda looked at him for a considerable time. Then said, deliberately, “An end to your wearisome, insipid games.”

“Why Anaconda!”

“You know exactly what I’m referring to. I can’t understand why you’re being so coy. It’s to your advantage as much as mine.”

Grouper sent him a blubbery wink – possibly the most unpleasant thing that had happened in the room to that point. He refilled his goblet again and smiled complacently. “No thanks. Keep your complement. I’ve got all the numbers I need.”

Anaconda tilted his head and leaned back in his chair. “Well, then,” he said, with a grin like an alligator’s, “Perhaps there’s still one thing you do want from me.”

Face in his mug, Grouper cocked an eye at him, shrugged.

Anaconda murmured, “I’ve been thinking... I might negotiate.”

Grouper, though his expression of blasé indifference didn’t change, put down his mug. “What more is there to negotiate?”

“I’m talking about the side deal.”

“I enjoy a good laugh as much as anyone, my friend, but – don’t make me laugh.”

“Laugh if you like, but my offer is serious.”

The slaver eyed him closely; returned to his mug. “We can discuss it tonight. If you continue to be out of your mind.”

Anaconda raised a forefinger. “That reminds me,” he said. “I want to take the little pawn – er, this young buck here – on a tour of the Black Hole —”

“Are you joking?—” “WHAT?” burst out simultaneously from the Slaver and Piranha. Both subsided, glaring at the robot.

“My facilities are not for the likes of that!” snorted Grouper. “Do you want him to get crushed?”

Anaconda turned to grin at Piranha’s gape of increasing alarm. “As I was saying before, I wish to find him a proper body slave. We’ll check out the merchandise in person.”

Grouper chuckled. “Oh, is that all? No problem there. But it’ll still cost you.”

Anaconda raised his cup cheerfully. “I don’t mind. See, it’s a celebration. Today he becomes a certified pirate.”

Piranha was staring from one of them to the other. “Anaconda—”

“Now don’t spoil the moment with your tiresome gloom, First Mate. Here. Emulate your betters and take a drink.” He thrust the cup into Piranha’s hand.

Piranha put it down. “I’m not setting foot on that slave ship,” he said.

“I think you’d find it quite fascinating,” Anaconda murmured.

“You can say that again,” chuckled Grouper. “At least, he might not, but you – Why, my dear Captain, you yourself haven’t seen it since it was renovated. Can’t wait to show off the improvements. You’ll corrode with envy.”

“Just what have you done with it? It’s not even recognizable.”

“Ah, so true, my dear fellow! The superb technologies of Binskrig—”

Piranha, settling uneasily back down in his seat, tried not to hear their talk. Side deals? Going on board that slave ship? But this wasn’t the time or place to have it out with Anaconda.

The smoking, coiling sound of those voices, covertly duelling – underneath the surface cordiality, each was surely doing his best to put something over on the other – not that he cared, but – but the sound of treachery itself set loose the nausea in him that had been rising in surges all evening, set it rippling, turned him pale –

Enough, enough, enough.

Facing away from them, he could not avoid glimpsing the battlefield. Oh, yes, that. Here he was, he and Anaconda and that abominable human, sending their little jabs at each other, busying themselves with their little games and rivalries, while down there a thousand living beings flailed in a bloody struggle to the death over a ditch. Killing and dying whether anyone noticed or not.

The nausea, the rage – he clung to the chair arms, held still.

He had been on this ship for months. He knew most of the pirates by name, and many by character. He knew a lot of the slaves on board by sight, some by name, a few of them quite well – ones he worked with regularly. He knew nearly every corner of the vessel outside of the engine areas and the robot section. He had made himself part of this place; not only because he must in order to survive, but because he couldn’t help it. He could not live and work with people day after day without – at least to some degree taking them on. Being who he was.

Being who he was. Which was what?

The nausea gripped him fiercely. The sound of the battle grew preternaturally, hypnotically loud, drowning out everything – the low sly voices beside him, the roaring of the mob – then itself was swamped by the torrent of revulsion that thundered over him. The agony, the horror, the pain, the desperation, it engulfed him, slammed him down him like tidal waves. With a gasp he jerked forward; then froze again in the chair. The – the boxes, eternity of concrete darkness, radiating agony, suffocating —

***

“Now, Piranha!” boomed Anaconda’s voice. His fist, a metal ball, shoved against Piranha’s side in a painful simulacrum of comradeship.

Whether it was the rum, the betting, his dealing (or double-dealing), or simply the effect of his universal triumphs, the Captain of the Insurrection was at his most grandiosely expansive. It was unsettling enough to see him grinning broadly like a naked human skull; this outright joviality was terrifying. “Time for a drink!”

Ignoring him, Piranha slid down in his seat. Anaconda grabbed him and sat him up straight – though less painfully this time, almost playfully.

“After all, whom do we have but you to thank for this entertainment, the gift of this bountiful harvest which you yourself provided!”

“Bountiful – You mean all those captives?”

“Why of course! The best haul in years! We owe you so much!”

Piranha’s face had no expression whatsoever. “I brought in as many as you told me to bring in.”

“Indeed you did, and when has that ever happened before? You did a spectacular job, First Mate. It would be petty, even ungrateful, of me to deny it. And yet I don’t see you enjoying this superb spectacle. Oh, now don’t roll your eyes at me. Such appalling cynicism while these poor brave fellows are in the midst of a struggle for freedom!”

“Freedom?” said Piranha. “Is–is that the ‘benefit’ you were talking about? They can go free?”

The sounds of clashing swords, cries of fear and rage and pain took hold of him again, physically, he trembled.

“Why, of course,” Anaconda said. “That was the deal. That they could earn their freedom. All of them left standing at the end of the battle, if they belong to the winning team, will be allowed to stay on the ship as pirates, instead of being sold as slaves. The losing team, and those too damaged to become pirates, will go with my friend the Angel of Mercy here.”

“Ah,” Piranha said. “So. Freedom.” His vision spinning, he sat up straighter. The sickness surged.

“Yes,” added the Slaver, complacently. “That’s part of the penalty I pay for the pleasure of attending your master’s fine entertainment. Always getting stuck with a passel of unsaleable cripples. But, well, I do have a duty towards the poor helpless creatures; and I can still get a decent amount of work out of them taking care of things on the Black Hole. It does save using up good slaves.”

“You see?” Anaconda grinned at Piranha. “Isn’t this a fine solution? Some of those captives will become pirates! And the rest of the survivors of the battle won’t be killed! I should think even you would approve.”

Piranha closed his eyes. Then opened them, fiercely. “Just incidentally,” he said, “do any of them ever survive?”

“Certainly. You might have a few among your own men who became pirates that way.”

“And this is the deal you’re offering them.”

“Why yes,” said Anaconda. He grinned wider. “Don’t you think I offer spectacularly good deals?”

Piranha didn’t answer.

Anaconda leaned back again in his chair, still grinning. “Perhaps I should be a merchant, after all. Though it would take some serious work to catch up with that level of sheer raw greed.”

“Oh,” said Grouper, placidly, “You do all right, Anaconda.”

“Now,” Anaconda went on to Piranha, ignoring irrelevant comments, “Take this cup. Hold it. Drink.”

Piranha held onto the cup, as Anaconda was blocking the tray, but he didn’t drink. “Why?” he said. “Why are you so anxious for me to drink? What does it matter?”

“There’s no added drug or poison, if that’s what’s bothering you. You can have some of the blatherskite’s over there if you’re suspicious. He’s got plenty.”

“I’m – It’s not that. I just —” Piranha looked at the Boss with genuine perplexity. “What are you trying to do?”

Anaconda looked back at him, saying nothing. Flecks of harsh blue light, reflected from the battlefield, played fitfully over that inhuman yet expressive metallic face with its inscrutable self-lit eyes.

And for a moment, it was as though Piranha had never seen him before. As though he himself had just fallen into his chair, yanked from some other unknown existence, and was now staring at a thing that could not be imagined. With surreal detachment he saw a machine, an artifice, a made thing, crafted by beings of great talent and skill and undoubted malignity; something dark and brilliant, magnificent, casually menacing, with the angular beauty and repulsion and fascinating, unfathomable alienness of a giant insect.

Then, with a shudder, it was not a machine; it was a face, the face of the Boss – alive, aware – only too aware – those pupilless glowing eyes aimed at him with knowing, mocking, victorious amusement.

“You’re being difficult, Piranha. As usual. But I forgive you. I know you can’t help it; you’re just a natural killjoy. But between the Retailer of Creation over there and my piratical self, we’re going to reform you. Now hold onto your drink and enjoy the grand finale. This is a celebration, and you’re coming with us tonight to continue the party after the show. No – no talk. You’re coming.”

With that, he turned back to the Slaver and was instantly deep in some complex negotiation.

Left to himself, Piranha took a long breath. He put down the drink. He had some trouble getting it onto the table, his hand kept missing.

The battle was indeed reaching a climax, as the war-bots closed in on the frantic human remnant, crushing them closer together, harrying them into a last desperate attack. He took another tremulous, painful breath. Anaconda and Grouper were upping their bets. The robot officers in the front of the stand were screaming like humans. The humans in the auditorium were screaming like the robots, laughing and cheering. The audience hooted as stumbling fighters caromed onto each others’ weapons or even their own. Cries could now and again be heard amidst the roar of the pirate audience and the chugging and clanging of the war-bots.

Piranha glanced at Anaconda. The Boss had paused in his sparring with the Slaver and was contemplating the battle. His metal body lounged back in the chair, goblet dangling in a three-pointed grip, the picture of languid suavity. But his gaze never wavered from the carnage below.

Oh yes. The sophisticate. The aristocrat. Whatever his fastidious distaste for the uncouth Slaver, for the howling rabble he commanded, he was no different from any of them. Pirates, all.

Piranha sank deeper into his seat. The battle followed him. He squeezed his eyes tight. He tried subtly to pull his hat down over his ears. Cowardly, yes, but to hell with that.

From somewhere, a green-blue planet flickered past him. He took a slight shocked breath. The planet wavered, almost blown out like a candle.

Inside his darkness, he sank, continued to sink, like – a stone thrown into Volcano Lake, the hollow mountain filled with water that went to depths that some said reached to the centre of the world. Water so clear you could follow the stone down for miles, miles, until it was swallowed into black shadows...

No. He was here. Drowning in his own black shadows. He was here, where he belonged. With these shrieking, cheering brutes of primal urges, creatures lusting for battle and sex and drunkenness, jabbering and slobbering over cruelty, gleefully unconscious of anything outside their own nervous systems. They were his. He was theirs.

Little Piranha didn’t like it? What difference did that make?

It was stirring, gathering, building. Under the swelling nausea he was suffocating. His side, where he’d been clawed repeatedly by the Boss, ached with a mocking pain. (Odd how it was persisting.)

What difference did it make? What difference? What he felt, what he did? What these gibbering monsters did? What anyone did?

Their biggest haul ever because of him. Which was what he had promised Anaconda, wasn’t it?

The little guy. The little guy had saved his planet. At least, given it a reprieve... He’d made a deal. And what–who was the price? Those pulingly pitiful creatures struggling down there? Wouldn’t they have been captured anyway? Might not even more of them have been killed without Piranha to keep a fierce hand restraining the pirates? More killed and less captured... More village burning, more pirates killed and injured, more destruction everywhere and... less profit for Anaconda and the Slaver...

And if the little guy hadn’t done it – who would be the slaves being sold to the Slaver at this moment? And the planet of “conventionally attractive” beings would still have been invaded, the pirates murdering, burning, looting pillaging, raping at will. Or some other such planet. And —

So it was all fine, then? Everything fine, no problem?

In his depths, something volcanic, painfully clutching him, redhot metal claws deep in his body. A surge of horror and protest and outrage and loathing —

He clamped it down.

Loathing? Of whom? Anaconda? Who had merely accepted the offer, in a spirit of sardonic experiment, of the little fool he had defeated? The Slaver, that legitimate businessman? Or the people – whoever they were, wherever they were – who bought slaves from the Slaver? Who created the Slaver?

Or – the damned idiots in front of him obediently murdering each other as he watched? Why didn’t they turn on their captors – force them to do the killing? Why did they kill each other? Why didn’t they kill themselves? Why hadn’t they killed him? Why did they kill each other? Why —

He was panting quietly under his hat, holding it back, holding it back, holding it back.

Hadn’t he decided to make a deal? Was there any number of people, any number of planets he would not sacrifice to protect that little blue-green planet? – which none of them had harmed, which they didn’t even know existed. Thousands of them, here, now, killing and dying and bleeding and suffering because of him, because of his preoccupations – and to serve his purposes he was going to put more and more of them to kill and die and suffer and be sold to gods only knew what fate —

The rage surged in him, erupted throughout his body, engulfed him like lava. Dizzy, gasping, shaky, he slumped in the chair.

Rage, despair, sickness, oh poor little Piranha.

He lay there, silent, burning in the lava, sheltered by the hat but unable to escape the multitudinous sounds, more than sounds, the sensations, the – persons – of the pirates, the robots, the battle (oh, every individual being on that field, for wasn’t he a god now? capriciously determining the fates of innocent, helpless victims? participating in their defeat from safety and afar?); the rumbling voices of the Slaver’s minions; the stertorous, asthmatic gasping of the massive beast himself; and the quiet, penetrating metallic chuckle of that thing next to him.

That thing? Who in this place wasn’t a thing?

His only certainty in all of this was that he would be killing and burning and enslaving till the end of his existence. That he could count on.

And he had known that. When he played that little game, took it on – the role of pirate. He’d known that perfectly well. It wasn’t like he was surprised. It wasn’t like— it wasn’t like—

He wanted to fling himself out the window, fly to that stage, run or be run through by swords, he didn’t care which, he wanted violence. The wave upon wave of crashing pain, fear, and horror from the battle, the vile joy of the pirates, the urbane viciousness of Anaconda, the complacency of that Slaver, everything that had cascaded over him, pummelled him, suffocated him all evening, it all surged over him in a mad vortex of hate. He couldn’t begin to understand it, much less suppress it, it went far beyond comprehension, it was mindless, purely physical, a hatred so savage he clawed away from it in terror even as it swept him under, drowning him in loathing.

Loathing for everything around him, for everyone, everything in the universe; and most especially, loathing for Piranha that choked, swelled his mind and body till he thought he would black out, burst, die.

He lay gripping the chair, gasping; furious; paralyzed.

There were tears in his eyes. God damn it, tears.

To those gods-abandoned buffoons slaughtering away at each other for pirate entertainment, to their foul spectators just as ready to kill or be killed, laughing at it all, to the tens of thousands of slaves right now being packed away and delivered to some unknown ghastly fate, to the untold agonized ghosts boxed in an eternity of blackness – to all the planets and ships and sun systems that were yet to be attacked, the millions and billions and trillions of them, what the oxidated rust-streaked difference did it make? Everything had happened, everything would happen. Tears? Filthy, vile, brutal pirate, murderer, torturer, slaver – in the name of the gods the robots didn’t know they had, what difference did that make? What difference did anything make?

His eyes snapped open. He sat up straight, with a fierce huff of breath.

He snatched up the cup of rum. Its fumes burned his nose, his eyes. The nausea, the boil of rage and hate, it surged in him, shivered his vision, vibrated the cup in his hand.

He gripped the cup hard, held it still. Took a slow, snarling breath.

Then, eyes once again shut, in a single long gulp he swallowed it all.