Free Walk the Plank by John Scalzi Page A

your first ship?
    DAMANIS: I’m nineteen standard, sir. No, I was on another ship before this, the Shining Star . I’ve been doing this since I turned twenty in Erie years, which is about sixteen years standard. This is my first tour on the Morningstar, though. Or was.
    EL-MASRI: Was, you say.
    DAMANIS: Yes, sir. She’s gone, sir.
    EL-MASRI: Gone as in left? She’s gone off to her next destination.
    DAMANIS: No. Gone as in gone, sir. She was taken. And I think everyone else who was on her might be dead now.
    EL-MASRI: Malik, I think you need to explain this to me a little better. Was the ship all right when you skipped into our system?
    DAMANIS: As far as I know. The ship stays on Erie time, and it was the middle of the night when we skipped. Captain Gahzini prefers to do it that way so that when we move cargo, we do it in the morning when we’re fresh. Or that’s what he tells us. Since the cargo we had for you was already packed when it came on board, it didn’t really matter. The captain does what the captain does. So we arrived in the middle of the night for us.
    EL-MASRI: Were you working then?
    DAMANIS: No, sir, I was asleep in the crew quarters, along with most of the rest of the crew. We had a night’s watch on at the time. The first thing I knew about anything going on was the captain sounding a general alert. It blasted on and everyone fell out of their bunks. We didn’t think anything of it at the time.
    EL-MASRI: You didn’t think anything of a general alert? Doesn’t that usually mean you’re in an emergency?
    DAMANIS: It does, but Captain Gahzini runs a lot of drills, sir. He says that just because we’re a merchant ship doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have discipline. So every three or four skips he’ll run a drill, and since the captain likes to skip in the middle of the night, that means we get woken up by a lot of general alerts.
    EL-MASRI: All right.
    DAMANIS: So we fall out of bunks, get dressed and then wait for the announcement about what the drill is this time. Is it a micrometeor puncture, or is a systems failure of some sort, or what is it. Then finally Chief Officer Khosa comes on the public address system and says, “We are being boarded.” And we all look at each other, because this is a new one; we haven’t ever practiced something like this. We have no idea what to do. Doctor, my leg is really hurting.
    SPURLEA: I know, Malik. I’ll give you something as soon as you’re done talking.
    DAMANIS: Can I get something in the meantime? Anything?
    GANAS: I can give him some ibuprofen.
    SPURLEA: We’re running low on that, Magda.
    GANAS: I’ll take it out of my own stash.
    SPURLEA: All right.
    GANAS: Malik, I’m going to go get you that ibuprofen. It will be just a minute.
    DAMANIS: Thank you, Doctor Ganas.
    EL-MASRI: You said you never drilled for being boarded. But there have always been pirates.
    DAMANIS: We’ve drilled for being pursued by pirates. For that, most of the crew locks down while defensive teams prep countermeasures and the cargo crew preps to jettison the cargo. We work in space. Pirates can’t swing over on ropes and take a ship. They run you down and threaten you to get you to hand over your cargo. Only then do they board the ship, take the cargo and go. That’s why the last resort is throwing out the cargo. If you don’t have it anymore, they have no reason to keep pursuing you.
    EL-MASRI: So these weren’t pirates.
    DAMANIS: We didn’t know what they were. At first we didn’t know that there was anyone. We still thought it was a drill. Chief Khosa tells us we’re being boarded and we have about two or three seconds to wonder what that means, and then he comes back on the PA and says, “This is not a drill.” That’s when we knew something was really up. But we didn’t know what to think. We weren’t drilled on this. We stood around looking at each other. Then Bosun Zarrani came into the quarters, told us we were being boarded and that we were to stay