⚒️ Nordstoem’s Smiling Teeth

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In EVA suits, Keke and Rosalia stripped the wreckage of the ship they had been assured would be The Berganza. But the words ‘Nordstroem’s Smiling Teeth’ were printed on various bulkheads, plates, and torn uniforms. This seemed to suggest they had been misinformed. On The Heartless She the images from onboard optics flowed across screens; databanks were mined and sent back in encrypted laser pulses, confirming the physical evidence.

“Cock-up or conspiracy?” Didi and Lev sat sipping char in the canteen.

“Whenever there’s a choice between the two...” Lev chided.

“Choose cock-up.” Didi sipped again and repeated the truism her father had told her over and over again. 

“Good girl.” Ovsei ruffled her helmet-cropped hair as he came through from the galley. “What next?”

“Two choices. We go back to base and get more info, or we pursue from here.” Lev counted the options, one, two, on a thick finger and thumb, accepting his own pat.

“If it is a conspiracy and we go back, we are done.”

“So we go on.”

“After we strip the ship for parts, yes.” Lev had been a quartermaster on a peregrine boat his entire life. 

“Sow now, reap later.” Didi intoned in her father’s heavy accent.

“Oh, it is mocking me we are doing now is it?” He playfully swiped at her brushed her nose, but only gently. “You are a good girl, Nadezhda. What did I do to deserve you, my Didi?”

 “Not enough, papa, but you got me anyway. I suppose you also got Rosie, which balances things somewhat.” Didi cocked her head to see if her sister had heard. The lack of outrage over the comms suggested she would escape future violent reprisal. 

“Keke, sweetie, is there anything over there that’s genuinely worth anything?” Ovsei was fidgeting. He was not a man made for sitting still and waiting.

“Almost done,” Keke was grunting as if she was pulling something heavy off a wall.

“I have a bad feeling,” Rosalia put in.

“Feelings have no place in this business,” her sisters chorused over the comms channels. This was a rule their fathers had ignored when adopting them, and several times since.

“You have something for us, I think.” 

The new voice spoke in a calm drawl. It was a killer’s voice, calm and rich. It was the sort of voice Rosalia aspired to have when she was a grown woman. It was not the sort of voice any of the crew of The Heartless She wanted to hear break into their encrypted communication lines.

Lev toggled encryption links, following their agreed plan for ambushes.

“Girls get off—”

“Naughty naughty, very naughty,” a synthesised voice responded—sinister through a popping crackle. Music blurted into the line, blocking any attempts at further conversation.

“You have something we want.” 

The pirate’s spokesperson’s voice was a blend of boredom and fatigue. On The Heartless She, and in the munitions-blasted corridors of Nordstroem’s Smiling Teeth, people hoped her tone did not reach annoyance before they had the opportunity to explore non-lethal deescalation.

“We are a humble mining ship, engaged in rescue—”

Lev had thickened his accent to its broadest burr, the one he had when he was drunk and doing impressions of his uncles back home. It was what he did when playing the part of an honest man; a poor man.

“Cut the shit,” a new voice interjected. “You’re The Heartless She, you’re a peregrine mercenary. And you’ve received a recent payment which we are here to relieve you of. Only that payment though, we’re not savages.”

The voice had a buttery quality to it, rich and dripping with contempt. Lev never liked the French, and had inculcated his daughters with the same suspicion of the breed.

“They sold us out.”

It was so obvious. 

They were supposed to have killed The Berganza.

Then the new ship would come and take their money, and if they resisted, they’d be blasted into pieces so small they wouldn’t even count as micro asteroids.

Lev sent the Emergency Protocol signal, three static clicks, across all comms bands.

Then he pressed the button which fired all The Heartless She’s weapons at once.

It was a lot of torpedos.