Mary
The new tug was faster - but it still took a day to get to the first sector. During that time, Si did his best to work off his pussy-sucking tab with the android. Shiva kept finding more and more reasons why she should be allowed to ride his face as Staci rode his cock. By the time they got to the first wreck, Si was convinced that his dick was too broken for even a salvage operator to recycle.
As Shiva put on her spacesuit, Si asked, "Why does your suit look like a blow-up sex-doll?"
The auburn-haired android giggled and said, "No pirate will willingly shoot a sex-doll. This thing will be more useful than the heaviest shielding money could buy."
Si shook his head, smiling, and put on his own suit. The boys - all eleven of them - had cleared a path to the wreck. Shiva left them buzzing around with their debris nets to scoop up all of the nuts, bolts, and washers to toss into the renderers.
The original six droids were assigned to renderer #1; the newest members of the team were assigned to #2. For the next wreck, Shiva planned to have all of them use #1 until it halted because it was out of output space. When #2 stopped, they'd swap out all of the cargo-crates and start the process again. She would compare the two approaches and figure out which was working better. The comparison wouldn't be apples-to-apples - because each wreck was a little different - but she planned to match the data as closely as possible to develop an overall strategy that would optimize their efforts.
The sector looked like a ship graveyard. For whatever reason, the pirates had towed the ships close to an asteroid field before plundering them - or maybe it was after. Regardless, the ships were far enough off of the trade lane that this had been a lower priority - until there were more and more sectors with more and more ships.
"Shiva, do an active scan."
"There's nothing there."
"How good of a picture are we getting behind those two large asteroids?" Si asked.
"You think there's a pirate ship hiding back there?"
"Maybe? Why do they have all this shit stacked up like this? Nobody takes the time to do this."
"Yeah."
"Keep an eye on the radar. I've got the heebie-jeebies."
"Aye, Cap'n."
"I'm not sure that's better than 'master'..."
Shiva's voice giggled in Si's helmet.
They didn't find anything of significance in the first ship. The engines had been blasted - and those were the only components (for this model of ship) that Virgil had on his list. Shiva and Si joined the boys in cutting the craft apart. One droid from each team had been tasked with ferrying all of the pieces into the Old Timer and pitching them in the recyclers.
Finally finished with the first ship, they got everyone aboard to move to the second one. The boys cleared a path and Shiva eased the Old Timer up beside the doomed freighter. Once they were in place, and everyone had their assignments, the process began all over again.
The boys were finishing up, sweeping the area of debris, and Si & Shiva were just finishing checking the ship's interior for corpses, when Shiva spotted movement from behind the closer asteroid. In seconds, every member of the salvage team was heading to the Old Timer to gear up. The incoming ship was on an intercept course. From all appearances, Si & Company were about to have visitors. There was little doubt that these were the pirates who'd laid claim to this sector. Both sides of the cargo-bay were open - with the atmospheric-barrier keeping the space filled with breathable air.
The pirate ship pulled alongside and started disgorging its villainous crew. Shiva had everybody ready to receive their guests. Si was tucked in behind cargo-crates with a laser-pistol. The boys were docked into their charging-stations with their stun-sticks mag-locked to their sides like some innocuous appendage. Shiva was planking; her body was rigid - leaning up against the bulkhead. She looked like somebody had forgotten to put away their plastic, blow-up sex-doll after a busy night of fucking in the cargo-bay and had just left it leaning against the wall. - Pinned between her body and the bulkhead, her weight was holding the double-headed war-axe she'd bought - and she had been DYING to try out. The pirates would be dying WHEN she tried it out.
Armed with all manner of guns and melee weapons, the pirates thrustered over to the Old Timer, eased through the atmospheric barriers (into the cargo-bay), and settled onto the floor of the space - the artificial gravity taking hold as soon as they passed within. Sixteen of the dirtiest, ugliest spacers gathered together and stared at the sex-doll. Three of them were dumb enough to remove their helmets to talk.
"What the fuck is that?" one asked, pointing.
One of the men shrugged and another started to answer - right before Shiva killed the lights, turned off the atmospheric barriers, and assigned targets to each of the Old Timer's crew-members. With the vacuum of space suddenly claiming the cargo-bay, the number of pirates who were still alive dropped by three - as the ones who had removed their helmet lost the ability to breathe - and froze to death.
From where he was standing behind the crates - his boots magnetically holding him in place - Si aimed his pistol at the head of the boarder that Shiva had assigned to him and blasted a hole in his helmet, killing the man.
All eleven of the boys flicked their stun-sticks on, used their thrusters to head towards the disoriented pirates - each assigned their individual opponent by the Sex-Doll-Shiva the Destroyer - and followed her instructions to the letter. That letter, boys and girls, was 'G' - for genitals. Eleven of the twelve remaining pirates suddenly developed the inability to process thought - as their cock & balls felt the full effect of the AI's sadistically straight-forward approach to hand-to-hand combat.
Meanwhile, the director of this lethal orchestra had spun, grabbed her shiny, antique weapon, and was moving from the pirate she'd already decapitated, to mow through the ones who were frozen in time & space - reeling from the abuse their genitals were taking - as the salvage-team's robot crew zapped their poor little pee-pees again and again. After decapitating two more, she decided this approach was just creating more mess for them to clean up. She just started chopping the axe into the men's agony-filled faces, and letting the vacuum claim them.
As she killed, she sent the boys out of the way - dragging their assigned corpse - clearing the battlefield to give her more room to move. From his spot in the corner, Si continued to blast the targets Shiva assigned him.
Shiva's sensors told her the pirate ship was trying to leave. She targeted it with the tractor beam, finished killing the last attacker, and organized the defensive team to prepare to board the enemy vessel. They all gathered in the ship's airlock and she hit the buttons to cycle the space so they could enter and take the ship. A jaunty little tune - pirate elevator music - played over the speakers as they waited for the interior door to open. Shiva hadn't even had to override any kind of security. Apparently, breaking into a pirate ship was unheard of.
Finally, the door opened and the away-team moved to follow their orders. Shiva put Si to the rear - with the boys at the vanguard - and they moved out. As they came to a room, Shiva would send one of the boys in, declare it clear, and the team would advance.
In the end, they found two people onboard - the pilot (who died of a broken neck at the hands of Shiva, as Larry held a stun-stick against his testicles) and a young woman locked in a room with a dingy, bare mattress. Based on the smell, the chamber-pot in the corner had not been emptied in quite a while.
As they pulled off their helmets, Shiva didn't react but Si let out a loud curse and covered his nose.
"Come on, dear girl, the android said. Let's get you out of this hell-hole. We'll get you a shower and I'm sure Staci has something nice that will fit you. We'll burn those clothes. What's your name?"
"Are you an android?" she asked.
"Yes, is that okay?"
"Why does your suit look like a...?"
"I thought it would be funny, sorry. Actually, it worked perfectly, the pirates were so distracted by it that they didn't even have time to react before they were dead."
"They're dead? All of them?"
"Yes."
"Good. Did they suffer?"
"No - well - other than the boys ramming a stun-stick against their balls right before we slaughtered them."
At that "the boys" all held up their weapons. If droids could smile, they would have been exuberant.
The girl laughed - and then started crying.
"C'mon, hun. I can't smell the stench but Si's about to pass out. It's not good for you to be here any longer."
Shiva stepped over and offered the girl her hand. She took it and stood.
"Si, find this girl a suit so we can get her moved. Are we hauling this piece of shit back to Seb's?"
"Might as well. Can the boys clean this room up a little though? I'm pretty sure the selling price goes way down if we can't get the smell out of this place. Did we buy a suit for Staci?"
"No. If we can't find one here, we'll have to improvise. The pilot didn't have one on when I killed him. There should be one somewhere for him."
Si nodded as he turned to leave. Shiva sent a command and the boys stowed their weapons and went to help. She also told them to keep an eye out for any valuables. Larry came back with a suit that would work. Moe found a large safe in the captain's quarters. Darryl found a small armory. In the cargo hold, Si found two crates of electronics and one that looked like it held genuine bamboo.
Shiva took the girl to the airlock, talked her into removing her clothing, and got her into the suit. She ferried the young woman to the Old Timer, restored the artificial-gravity and atmosphere - so the team could get back to work - and handed the girl off to Staci. Through his helmet communicator, Si told Shiva to advise Staci to stay in whatever form she was in while the girl was around - so that she wouldn't be able to reveal the truth about the alien when she left the ship. Once the girl was in the shower, Shiva told Staci what Si had said. She nodded.
Si had started to move the cargo from the pirate ship when he realized they were going to have to fly the thing back to Seb's anyway - and there was no real reason to move all of the stuff to the Old Timer. Si went to work on the safe while the boys collected anything of value and tossed it into an empty cargo-crate. When he finally got the safe open, he found a bag filled with credit-sticks, another filled with credit-chits, another filled with jewelry, a dozen gold bars, five platinum bars, and a datapad.
Shiva downloaded some hacking routines and went to work on the datapad. It contained a treasure map. The pirates had five asteroids - scattered around the surrounding sectors - where they had mined out storage-vaults to stash their loot. The closest hidey-hole was the asteroid they had been using for cover when the Old Timer dropped into the sector.
By the end of the day, the second wreck was cleared and Shiva & Si moved the Old Timer and the pirate ship around behind the asteroid to see what goodies were waiting for them. They found a ton of gold, another ton of platinum, three of silver, and five of copper.
By that point, everybody was tired and they decided to stop where they were for the night. The boys went to sleep in their recharging cradles and the bipeds assembled in the kitchen/galley.
"You doing okay, hun?" Shiva asked the girl, who was wearing some fleece pajamas that Si didn't even realize the girls had bought.
"How much clothing have you two been buying?" Si asked, laughing softly.
"Never you mind, ogre," Staci said, laughing.
"Would you seriously tell us no?" Shiva asked.
"Probably not," Si admitted.
The new girl watched their byplay.
"Which one of you is in charge?" she asked.
Grinning, Si pointed at Staci, who pointed at Shiva, who pointed at Si.
When the girl laughed, they all joined her.
"What's your name, hun?" Shiva asked.
