Pirates of the Cassiopeian

 

We never bought a flagship, never worked an honest day,

Never signed the merchant ledgers, never missed the Earthborn way.

We took the lonely freight lanes where the Mars-bound haulers ran,

And we made our living lightly, lifting cargo where we can.

 

Our ships were cheap and hungry, held with baling wire and prayer,

No cannon in the belly, not a warhead we could spare.

So we learned to fly in close, boys, close enough to graze the hull,

Slip a net around the payload, cut it free, and haul it full.

 

We bow to no dominion, pay no tribute, hold no crown,

We're the rats between the planets that the Earth can't hunt all down.

Too many for her navies, and too quick for her disdain,

We take the black for wages, and we hide among the lanes.

 

Now Earth, she rules by terror with her ships of fission’s flame,

She'd crack a colony open just to keep the others tame.

But she cannot burn a thousand when there's one of her to spend,

So we work the crowded midground where her long arm can not bend.

 

They christened us the vermin, called us parasites and worse,

Said a pirate's but a leech that rides a richer captain's purse.

Let 'em curse us from their windows while we plunder through the night,

For the wretched keep on breathing, and the breathing's our delight.

 

Then word came down from Mars, from a tower on the rim:

The Cassiopeian stars saw their light suddenly dim.

A mountain bore a line for Earth, it would not turn nor slow,

And it carried every breathing thing a hard and final blow.

 

So Earth put out her finest then, her pride, her plated best,

Her pulsing plasma war-fleet with the warheads at the breast.

They ran it down past Jupiter and lit it up like day,

And they split the mountain open, and they turned their prows away.

 

But a mountain split is boulders still, a thousand jagged stones,

And half of them came inward now toward Mars and moon and homes.

Earth had spent her every warhead, she'd nothing left to throw,

One rock had been catastrophe; now a thousand more to go.

 

And the worlds that spat upon us braced to die beneath the rain,

With their navies burnt to cinders and their every prayer in vain.

Not a gun could stop the shower, not a fleet, not all their gold,

And the mighty stood there helpless as the shrapnel sailed the cold.

 

Then out the dark we came, my loves, in every cheap and battered hull,

Ten thousand more than Earth had feared, the sky gone thick and full.

And all the eyes on Earth that day, and moon, and Martian shore,

Watched us send our hungry bows to make a falling war.

 

The planets watched and wondered if we'd come to strip the bones,

To loot the very doomsday, turn a profit off the stones.

But our harpoons weren’t for them that day, our nets hung on the wall,

And we carried not a weapon, not a warhead, none at all.

 

So we did the only trade we knew: we slid in close and true,

Close as ever we had flown, till the rock filled up the view.

We spun our sterns against it, and we lit the ancient core,

And we sent the stones to darkness with the fire that we bore.

 

No blast to break it all apart, no fury and no roar,

Just the long and shoving river of the exhaust that we outpour.

One nudge upon a thousand rocks, and every rock a shove,

Till the daggers slid on past the worlds and burned themselves above.

 

So the leeches saved the gardens, and the rats held back the night,

And the parasite that Earth despised kept all the worlds alight.

Every sin they ever damned us for, the nearness and the guile,

Was the very grip that caught the sky and held it for a while.

 

The mighty broke the mountain, and it nearly broke the day,

We came up from the gutter and we shoved it out the way.

So sneer at all you like, my friends, if you've got breath to spare,

It was leverage, not thunder, kept a soul alive up there.

 

We'll not be caught by sunrise and we'll not be bought by crown,

We'll be back among the freight lanes 'fore they get the bunting down.

For the dark's our only country, and it's dark from shore to shore,

Let the worlds we saved come find us; we'll be pirates evermore.