Three men spun adrift in the endless void, floundering among the innumerable stars. I should have known when I saw their dapper helmets, their nylon plumes, their garish Day-Glo visors. I should have seen them for what they were—not moon merchants from the Helium Cluster, but genuine, cutthroat space buckos. Pirates—the worst of their kind.

The distress signal came in staccato bursts of white noise over background panic. The video feed was a farce—smoke-veiled scenes of men weeping, faces hidden in their hands (to mask their bad acting, no doubt). Sparks and small fires sprouted from control panels (digital manipulation). Blood was everywhere (authentic but strategically splattered from med-kit donor packets).

I was overeager. I wanted to be the hero.

Damn my need to flex my valor, puff my manly chest! Damn my insecurities! My need to impress when she is around.

I was, and am, beholden to her beauty. I will ever be a slave to her whims, eager to be in her thrall. In her presence, I have no self-control. I become a child, me, a Star Cruiser Captain!

There are untold worlds orbiting incalculable stars, yet throughout the universe, there is only one woman who occupies my heart. I can count her on the only willy I or any other man has. One woman came aboard my ship and took my heart from me.

I should have known the star buckos were star buckos, not comet miners or spacefaring surgeons, which is what they claimed to be. I should have known by their magenta trousers and face tattoos, their moon-rock nose studs and costume jewelry.

I should have fucking known!

The distress signal came in over dinner, which signaled my distress.

The evening meal had been romantic: a table for two, candles and wine, formal dress. I was three bites into my Andromeda sea bass when my XO came in with apologies and bad news. I reminded him that “Two’s company, three’s a crowd.”

“What?” he asked.

“Never mind,” I said.

I watched the distress signal three times. The woman I love was watching me, playing with the pearl necklace I bought for her after my promotion. After all these years, she still excites me. She placed a pearl between her Martian-red lips and let it sit there. She told me, “A strong man would know what to do.”

“Play it one more time,” I gave the command (this was my third and final viewing).

My XO played back the hologram, betraying a look of irritation. From under his breath, I heard a “lame duck” waddle from his mustached lips.

I finished viewing the signal. Three strikes and you’re out—the old baseball adage.

I removed the cloth napkin from my collar and threw it over my unfinished sea bass. I stood up and damn near struck a pose.

“Okay, folks,” I announced. “Let’s move into third gear, folks.” I say “folks” a lot—nervous tick. “Let’s go save those poor doctors.”

My lady watched me like a bad movie. She spat the pearl from her lips and sipped her white wine. I shuddered, beguiled yet full of shame.

“Alright folks,” I announced. “Let’s go be heroes.”

Brock Johnson, our ace pilot who everyone called BJ, came through the door with less than an inch to spare on either side of his broad shoulders. I don’t know how the guy does it, but when he takes off his helmet, his hair underneath remains perfectly styled. He did so then—he took off his helmet. Sure enough, his hair was divine, his blue eyes and white teeth shining brighter than the stars. If ever there was a handsome man, it was Brock Johnson. If ever there was a hero, it was BJ, pilot extraordinaire. Nibbling at her lower lip, my lover looked up at Bock Johnson. Let me tell you… if looks could give BJs.

“Awaiting orders, Captain.”

Looking up at BJ (six foot three), I had to remind myself that I’m the man in charge. “Folks need saving,” I used a deep voice when giving orders. “Good, honest doctors need our help. Let’s bring them in, folks.”

BJ threw his helmet back over his immaculate quiff and hiked up his nifty space pants. “Aye-aye, Cap.”

We followed him to the shuttle bay, where he fired up the tugboat and took her out into the infinite black. Our ace pilot played the part, bringing back the disabled surgeons with surgical precision, depositing a 40-ton medical vessel into the docking unit with aplomb. Watching the man fly was like observing fine art. BJ didn’t even break a sweat. He moved mountains into place like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle. I felt small.

We watched from the other side of the shuttle bay doors, catching glimpses through fused silica windows that were two inches thick. We saw BJ activate the airlock, the slow descent of the shuttle bay doors closing inward. We could see, but did not hear, the compressed hiss of oxygen filling the room as air pressure equalized, gauges broadcasting a numerical readout: red, orange, then green. We watched BJ approach the medical ship, hailing the wounded doctors inside.

Then we saw the doctors, not wounded after all, as they damn near danced when exiting their hijacked spacecraft. In festive livery, garish scarves and rainbow tattoos, they lifted their laser cutlasses and took aim with their energy pistols. We watched from the other side of the shuttle bay doors as Brock Johnson’s head, quiff and all, smoked and splattered to liven the stark white walls with bold splotches of vivid red.

A woman screamed—a terrible slaughterhouse squeal—but when I turned to my lover, she was remarkably calm. The scream had been my own. Holding my fingers to my lips to suppress an encore, I met my XO’s gaze, which defined disdain.

“What we have here, folks,” I found my voice in the end, “is a Code Red situation.”

“Code Red!” my XO shouted to the hunky men patrolling the catwalks above us. “Code Red!” he repeated. But it was too late.

The inner airlock opened, exposing us to many things, many bad things, like the smell of BJ’s charred brain matter, not to mention the sour aroma of buccaneer BO. Worse than anything else, it exposed us to attack: a storm of laser fire that ended with six dead patrolmen, strapping hunks bleeding out and smoldering up among the catwalks; my XO’s left eye melting in a boiling stream down his face and over his lips, the back of his head smoking around the rim of a moist hole about the size of a golf cup; my captain’s hat shot clean off my head, exposing my accursed thinning hair.

The space buckos (for this was the moment it became clear that was exactly what they were) sauntered down the gangplank of their commandeered vessel, holstering their smoking laser pistols and striding along in their outrageous pantaloons cinched at the knee. One of them was wearing a female nurse’s uniform. He was also wearing a fiercely unkempt beard that fell black and braided down to his nipples, which were exposed and pierced with sturdy, silver rings. He laughed so loud and heartily, so very deeply, that I could feel the vibrations traveling through the floor beneath my feet. But then I realized this sensation came not from the nurse/pirate’s booming laughter, but from the inner airlock, which began to close, clamping down on my thumb and forefinger, reducing my good right hand to maimed uselessness. Fortunately, in the very least, my middle finger remains, which I now employ in routine bitterness, thrusting it toward the cold, black cosmos.

The pain was like nothing I had ever felt. A pain I assumed at the time would never be matched or surpassed should I live the long life of a red dwarf star. The pirates laughed at me, which was salt in the wound, sure enough. But then, to my absolute shock and unthinkable dismay, my lover laughed at me, too.

My lover’s laugh was deep and throaty, very sexy. But she laughed at me, which made her seem ugly. She pointed at my disfigured hand, two-fifths obliterated, 40 percent useless— with her long, graceful fingers. She pointed at me with the finger that bore the ruby ring I bought for her when I became commander. She laughed so hard and merrily that the pearl necklace she wore —the same one I got her when I ascended to captaincy— bounced off of her moon-white breasts like an astronaut leaping in low gravity.

My heart was torn asunder, bleeding from its ruptured core. This was a new kind of pain—suffering on a galactic scale.

The astral pirates beat me soundly. They mocked my captain’s status, saluting me after each kick to the ribs. They shot any man or woman who came through the door, dismembering my crew with their laser swords. I wept, calling out my lover’s name, Pearl! but her only answer was more laughter.

The space raiders hit me across the head hard enough that I saw stars. Outside the fused silica window above me, I saw stars. I saw stars on my underpants, which were pried off my legs and waved around among uproarious guffaws.

The star bucko’s took my dignity that day. They took my lover, too. They took her long and hard, but as they did, she never stopped smiling. Amid the lewd ministrations and unwieldy positions that each of them partook of to suit their sinful pleasures, my lover’s necklace snapped at the chain, a mélange of pearls scattering among the tangle of tattooed limbs and sweaty genitals like so many stars dispersed across the cold cosmos.

They did not come to plunder our ship. The pirates came to take back what was already theirs.

Hand in hand with the most handsome of the cut-throats, I watched my lover’s backside ascend up the gangplank. She did not turn around to see me crying, my mutilated hand hiding my face that wept with authentic grief. She did not see me, nor would she. Never again.

The pirates left the way they had come, riding out into the fathomless void on a stolen vessel. I watched their ship grow smaller, a sliver of refracted light. In the last moment before it fully faded to black, it twinkled, like a pearl resting on a slick puddle of oil.

Among the innumerable stars, there were only three—three men adrift in the endless void. Three men came aboard my ship and took my true love from me.