Never underestimate a person who is cornered, has nothing left to lose, and has access to cleaning supplies. -- Anon Guest
They had done a lot of damage to the ship as it sailed between one place and the other. They had done a lot of damage to the passengers and crew.
They were, in fact, talking about blowing the vessel up once they were done stripping it of anything at all valuable.
The one fly in the ointment was a single janitor. She had evaded the initial invasion by being in the wrong place at the right time, and subsequently became a problem with an all-access keycard and physique small enough to scoot through the air vents with ease. So far, there had been seventeen poisonings, fifteen time-delayed chemical reactions, nine outright traps, and three pirate deaths. For the record, five of them were holding on by a thread and the rest were not happy.
"I am going to get this little [FEMALE DOG], I am going to catch her, and string her up, and show her her own insides. And then I will bite them!"
The pirate with the freshly-broken arm said, "And she's stolen all our explosives. They could be anywhere, boss."
The pirate captain slowly looked towards the direction in which their own ship lay. Had this one small Human had the time? Were they sure? Were they really sure? How much knowledge was readily available to -say- booby trap a pirate ship so that it blew up once all the crew were aboard?
Janitors, Captain Zaalok remembered, were trained to get into the small and inconvenient places for everyone's sanitary safety. They felt a slow chill crawl up their spine.
"Okay," they revised. "I'm going to catch her. I'm going to torture her for information. And then I am going to show her her innards. And do crochet with them."
"Sure she ain't got a deadswitch[1], boss?" asked the pirate who was having difficulty breathing.
"You are not helping," raged Zaalok. "You are supposed to help!"
There came a clomping of boots. Just as every door but one shut around the pirates. The insistent whirr of the air recycling fans stilled to a halt.
The Human was wearing a livesuit made for brief EVA, and not for extended protection. She was holding a brace of open bottles in both hands, and a dangerous expression on her face.
"Hello, [ORGANIC WASTE VENTS]. This is your five minute warning to surrender or die." She held up the brace of bottles. "Everyone you were holding hostage is out, there's no lifepods left, and I'm not sure if this suit is going to hold up against concentrated, industrial cleansers."
Those couldn't be hazardous chemicals. Humans cleaned with those chemicals. They cleaned surfaces that their young interacted with, using those chemicals. "This is a bluff," said Zaalok. "Those can't possibly be hazardous."
"Ding dong, you are wrong," singsonged the Human, and upended her burden.
One of the bottles contained bleach. It should not be mixed with a great number of things. As the last door shut on pirates and janitor alike, the area filled with toxic clouds as the pools of liquid fizzed and bubbled at her feet.
The pirates never stood a chance.
The janitor, Human Liss, had a slim one. She marched past them as they were dying, to a neglected decontamination booth, and ran all the cycles once she was inside. She had a screwdriver, and an intimate knowledge of the ships' workings. Once the decon was done, Liss kept the booth locked and removed a panel to the maintenance tube nearby.
It was a tight fit, but she was a small woman who knew how to squirm.
It would be a hell of a job to clean up that mess. Fortunately, it would be a job for the body corporate because she had just earned a Year or more by saving the ship, the crew, and stopping a band of space pirates.
As it was, she still had to un-sabotage the comms just to tell everyone that the metaphorical coast was clear. Except for the fact that they couldn't use the Promenade Deck any more.
[1] Deadswitch - the gender neutral variant of "dead man's switch".
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / monstersparrow]
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