Sterek One Shots

Space Pirate Samba

“There’s a second cruiser coming up on the left,” Derek called out to Laura, his hands gripping tight to the controls and eyes flitting over the small screen on the upper right screen of the cockpit. For once, he was glad that Laura had spent half of their earnings on a new security system for the ship. He was pretty sure two years ago they wouldn’t have had a chance against an attack from a group of bandits.

It was bad enough they’d been caught in deep space--but the second two cruisers had been deployed from the hull of that massive pirate ship, Derek knew these guys meant business. That was why he’d made sure to turn on the pulse sensors, which let him know where exactly the two bandit cruisers were coming from without Derek having to frantically try to cover all of his blind spots.

“I see ‘im,” Laura shouted back, followed by the sound of ‘the claw’ being deployed. It was really exactly that--a massive claw that Laura had traded for back on Nasper. It was one of the best investments she’d ever made, given that she could drag in up to a medium-sized pirate cruiser and suddenly they’d be one bounty richer after turning in whoever they had caught. The sound of Laura letting out a triumphant whoop was proof enough that they had managed to reel at least one of the bandits.

Jumping to her feet, Laura smacked the intercom. “Boyd, can you do prison detail? Erica, reel the claw back, we’ve got another one out there.”

Derek had barely managed to start turning the ship to try and get the other cruiser into their range when it zipped in close, scraping in just above the front of the cockpit and making Derek almost fall out of his chair in shock. He watched as it weaved in and out of the cargo load up top before circling around under the ship.

“Show off,” he muttered under his breath, thumbing a switch that would turn the outer hull into a giant magnet. They usually used it for moving cargo to the docking bay, but when there was a loud clang, Derek couldn’t help but feel a little smug knowing a space pirate had just gotten one-upped by one of the most common merchant ship accessories on their side of the galaxy.

Laura’s laughter was loud and sudden as she burst into the cockpit, grasping the back of Derek’s pilot chair and staring at the feed on the screen. “Did you seriously just use the haul magnet?” she breathed, grinning wide at small light flashing under the secondary cargo label.

“Yup,” Derek said, sliding his chair over to where he could guide the magnets to actually drag the ship into the hull. It was how they did the big transports--put a massive load inside a metal box and, essentially, beam it up.

Laura snorted, ruffling Derek’s hair and muttering, “I was starting to miss the sass master in you,” she teased affectionately. Derek gave her a dirty look, but turned back to focus on getting the cruiser into the bay without doing any extensive damage to the ship. It was a little bigger than anything they had ever tried to transport, so the sound of screeching metal was grating to Derek’s ears.

Heading out of the cockpit, Laura paused only to tuck a gun into the holster on her thigh before she made her way to the cargo hold. Derek paged Isaac to come up to the cockpit so he could check on the two pirates they had just snatched up. There was no mothership in sight just yet, but where there were cruisers in deep space, there was always a base.

Isaac was there within a few minutes, and Derek hurried down to join Laura. The closer he got, the more he recognized the sound of his sister’s yelling. Panic hit him and Derek bolted, running as fast as he could. He scrambled to get the door open, gun drawn as he burst into the cargo bay to see Laura flailing and screaming her head off at two dejected looking young men who were tied up in a heap on the ground (obviously Boyd’s doing).

“--were dead! I wish you were because I kind of want to kill you right now!” Laura roared, finally stepping enough to the side in her tangent that Derek could take in the sight of the two bandits.