by C. Vandyke
“Robots don’t count.”
“… A long time, sir.”
“Remind me—does anyone know where we are?”
“Your crew know we’re in the Tubes but I don't think they know how deep sir.”
“Does anyone outside my crew even know we’re friends?”
“No sir. Shit! Respectfully sir, if you do that- It will never go down.”
“What if I don’t want it to?”
“Ah, well then…”
“Would you be opposed?”
“No sir, not in the least sir, if I may, in fact, express enthusiasm?”
“You may.”
“I’d take the secret to my grave and smile every time someone cursed the Scythe. Respectfully. Sir.”
“Oh Joe…”
“My arm is stuck—”
“Ow, watch out there—that’s my elbow.”
“Sorry—alright it’s loose.”
“You were saying?”
“Your hands are cold, sir!”
“Should I stop?”
“No sir! But uh, may I return the favor?”
“I think you’d better.”
“Like this?”
“Exactly like that.”
* * *
If anyone knew that Joe DeBeers had fucked—been fucked by, rather, ain’t it?—the most feared ship’s captain in the Maelstrom, the legendary Bottomless Braddock herself. Well, he’d never have to buy his own drink again, would he? But Joe had never told a soul. The bartender at Idonian, no more than a glorified bouncer, was a gentleman, and that was that.
* * *
“Trouble.” Ralf said, bursting the bubble of Joe’s daydream.
“What kind?”
“Found our missing clientele,” Ralf gestured him to follow.
From the Casino’s elaborate faux Venusian portico, they watched a scrum of patrons pushing and shouting around a merchant scow. At first, Joe assumed it was some celebrity or another, slumming it on the Valadian Gateway and gathering a crowd. But a part in the crush revealed the truth.
A deep, bone rattling sigh and they muttered the same name.
“Kellogg.”
“That fucking prat,” Ralf muttered. “How many times a revolution do we need to do this?”
“Kraken of the dark, why?”
Ralf was already wading in, and Joe went after, pausing only to call the other security crew. The Lounge jail would be busy tonight.
* * *
“Here now! You can’t take that!”
Ralf was already shooing off patrons, using his booming voice to his advantage.
“Run along! Run along! This man is a fraud-”
“Hey!”
“And a huckster.”
“I am no such thing!”
“And whatever he is selling is fake!”
“All genuine guaranteed one hundred percent!”
But who would you believe? Joe grinned to himself. The big man in the tuxedo or the scrawny little shit he was holding up in one hand, shaken like a kitten by a mastiff?
“Kellogg Clark,” Joe said. “You good for nothing little—”
“It’s doctor Kellogg Clark to you, you walking pot roast.”
Ralf wasn’t having it.
“Doctor Clark, what did we tell you about setting up in front of the Idonian? You got the whole Gateway, and you choose to darken my door again?”
“Tonight I am selling very special, very exclusive merchandise, the kind that requires discerning—”
Their argument was likely to go on half the night—and if it was cold in the casino, it was positively freezing out here. Joe didn’t need to stand out in it.
“Well, the punters are going in,” Joe said. “You have this well in hand. I’ll head back to the-” His eyes fell on the side of Clark’s market scow, with its cascading shelves of junk. Amid the bottles of “Kraken’s tears” and polished stones labeled “Reele Piece of the Furst Worlde” was a silver key. Innocuous, uninteresting, tossed in an open box with other knickknacks.
Without missing a beat, Joe pocketed the Key, covering the theft by sweeping all the kraken’s tears to the deck. A shattering of glass, the stink of the bilges below the Lounge, and Joe Diamond headed back into the Casino. The Key to the Map of the Multiverse burned in his pocket.
“Does that feel good?”
“Yes Sir, gods yes. I’m close.”
“I’d better slow down then…”
“No! Damnit, you’re killing me.”
“You’re tighter than this side tube.”
“Been awhile, sir.”
“Would never have picked a big bruiser like you for a bottom.”
“No one lets me.”
“What?”
“Do this. No one gives me a chance. I’m always… ow fuck!”
“Easy big guy, easy. I have you.”
“Hit my knee, sir. It’s right narrow in here.”
“Sure is. Lean your head on the wall and let me work. God, who let you be so tall?”
“Oh!”
“How is that?”
“Goo-ood. Sir? I’m not sure how much longer I can hold off.”
“Can I go harder?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good boy. Shift over a little?”
“Kraken of the dark, I’m going to—”
“Me too!”
...
“Oh no!”
“What?”
“I dropped it.”
“Pardon?”
“The Key, Joe. I dropped the Key.”
* * *
The story they told, when they emerged from the upper tube into the waiting arms of her crew, was that the Key was lost when Parson Thrull confronted them in the lower chambers. And rather than face his curse, they fled.
“Sorry mates, the Key is gone. It ripped free, fell in the cracks.”
“And I’m not sure it really was the Key anyway,” Braddock said, accepting her hat and cutlass from her cox’n.
The collective groans were understandable, given the stakes of the caper. But the truth was few of the Scythe’s crew ever expected this to work. And none of them really believed the story that the Key to the Great Map was in a sub-basement of The Rebellion, anyway.
The only people genuinely upset were Joe, who found the Key in the first place, and Captain Braddock, who dropped the damn thing while they were fucking in the side tube. Since it was the finest lay of his life, Joe took the whole thing philosophically, and filed it under the category: stupid, but worth it.
* * *
“Well, thanks for helping us, Diamond,” Captain Braddock said, watching the crew preparing her longboat. The Scythe was just beyond scoping range, no more than a dark slash against the stars.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” Joe said, not sorry at all. “But perhaps for the best, aye?”
“You believe that about the map and Key then?”
“I’d rather we stay on this side of the Kraken’s Beak,” Joe said. “If given a choice.”
“You’re a smart man, Joe, but I’ll still hunt the map.”
“Good luck, sir.”
“Joe,” her voice dropped to barely a murmur. “If you need me—”
“I have the code memorized, sir.”
“Good boy,” she purred in the same tone she had used in the tube. Joe experienced a full body shudder, goosebumps all the way up his spine and out to his fingertips.
“I can still taste you,” he replied in the same low voice. “And I won’t be able to sit for a week.”
“I won’t tell,” she laughed. It took every ounce of willpower not to shove his head into her hands like a dog. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Me too,” Joe said. How much could he ask for? Did he have any right to? The words died in his throat.
“I’d better go,” she said. “Before we ruin our reputations right here on this loading bay.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I ached for days,” Joe muttered to himse
lf, working on autopilot, the weight of the Key in his pocket like the Beam itself- pulsing and bright. He couldn’t draw any attention to himself. Had to act natural. Completely natural.
“Joseph DeBeers!” The screech made him jump, biting back a curse of fear. Wound a bit tight there, mate. It’s only Soo-Z.
The server bot Soo-Z, her eyes flashing danger, rolled over to his side of the bar.
“That’s degreaser you just put in that drink! Are you trying to murder someone? Can I help?”
“Kraken! No baby, I reckon I’m that distracted.”
“Go take a break,” she said, taking the whole glass and dropping it into the incinerator. “It’s not too busy, and I’m programmed as a barback.”
“Yeah, reckon I’d better,” Joe said, planting a kiss on her cool ceramic cheek. “Ta, love.”
* * *
The Casino’s message array was deserted, but he checked over his shoulder every few minutes, anyway. His fingers hovered over the panel. The code entered, his hesitation centered on the message itself. It had to be harmless, meaningless, giving no hints of either the recipient or the purpose. “Dear Captain Braddock, I have found the Key to the Map which we lost when you nailed me to the tube-wall” was not possible.
* * *
“I found what we lost that night” would have to do. He sent the message, crossed his fingers and went to find a chain for the Key. He’d wear it around his neck, keep it safe.
There But For Grace
by S.D. Campbell
If not for Hope Halsey-Billings, Geoff Tellar and the others, God's grace itself wouldn't have stopped the Karrak'ul.
Col. Carol L. G. Johns D3DF (ret.) quoted in Dauntless No More: The Four Who Fell from a Hiveworld, by Elden Niloos-Ertek.
The Karkane Shoals were a denuded, lifeless hellscape. These long abandoned, drifting asteroids had been shattered and made further desolate by the scuttling of the Karrak Worldfleet. Even now, nearly two decades later, the legacy of the Queen Ram's death throes lingered as intense radioactive belts that would blaze with a gamma fury for a further million years.
The conspiracist Nelsman Ramnath called them the 'Darker museum of the Karrak Wars'. But he was a pompous ass. To Johnny Dillinger, a veteran of those wars, they were perfect for target practice.
Dillinger—his one good eye watching the scopes for movement—held his cutter Guttersnipe five kilometers off the lee side of Asteroid KARD7. This rock had hiveworld wreckage on it.
There! Movement. Slow and furtive, but then these remaining Karrak'ul drones were devolved, mindless things. Dillinger narrowed his eyes and stroked the trigger on his joystick. Ruby energy bolts stuttered from the cannon mounted under Guttersnipe's chin, and the drone evaporated.
"That's twelve; wasn't that easy on the hiveworlds," Dillinger grunted to himself. He leaned back and drank the last of his whiskey.
"Not sleeping well, sir?" the ship's AI asked.
"How'd you guess, Pickering?" Dillinger snarled.
"The empty bottles of whiskey—and the almost-as-empty funding account."
"What do you care if we're broke?" Dillinger scoffed, "It's not like you'll starve to death."
"Beyond my—or more precisely the ship's—need for nuclear fuel, my programming as your agent-of-record would bring me to the same conclusion." the AI replied. "You have been turning down jobs."
"I don't like working around anniversaries of important stuff," Dillinger slurred.
"I'm aware of no such anniversary," Pickering said.
"Nope, you're not. Easier that way." Dillinger stood and flicked the weapons system to standby. Wishing he had more whiskey, he grabbed a data pad and headed aft.
"There is one offer you might be interested in," Pickering said before Dillinger left the flight deck. "It arrived an hour ago and offers a substantial down payment, followed by a similar completion award."
"Send me the bid details—I'll read them over and then ignore them."
"No details available. This is a direct offer."
"Of what?"
"As I said, a substantial..."
"What's the job?"
"The request is to make contact at Uptown."
"That's it?" Dillinger snorted. "Not even worth taking a piss at."
"No, there's more. The note additionally says 'Furta vectigalibus est.'"
Dillinger paused.
"Archaic Terran Language: Latin. Shall I translate?"
"No," Dillinger said with a sigh. "Take us to Uptown."
"ETA is six hours."
"Good. I can sleep this off."
Dillinger was going to need his wits about him.
Memories of war plagued Dillinger's dreams.
“I can’t see all of them yet—we only have five droppers!” A cold sweat broke out on his brow as he scanned the drop-trooper’s IDs.
No Hope.
"Major, we need to provide close support—we don’t have time to escort the transport away!" his wingman shouted.
"We can't leave anyone behind!" Tellar shouted back. "Drone fighters are coming in hot—they'll burn the transport stem to stern!"
Where was Hope?
"They knew the risks—so did your wife!" the Colonel's voice came across the comm-net. "Stay with your squadron, Major."
"First dropper's on the hiveworld!" shouted his wingman, "We have touch—" His transmission ceased as drone plasma burned through his cockpit. Tellar twisted his controls to dodge the wreckage. His fighter shuddered as its 30mm cannon pumped multiple explosive rounds into the drone.
Tellar glanced at his scanners. The sky was clear.
Where the hell was Hope?
Had she gotten off the transport? He hadn’t seen her deploy yet...
The transport became an incandescent ball of fire.
"No!" Tellar screamed as heavy plasma rounds battered his armoured craft. Red replaced green across most of his consoles. Flight controls were out, and nowhere to ditch but on the hiveworld. This was going to hurt.
But not as much as losing Hope.
It was The End of the World. A massive black hole, slowly spinning as it devoured all errant mass that fell into its gravity well.
Outside the danger zone was Lighthouse Station. It was older than perhaps anything else in the sector. An intense beam projected from the upper spire of the top-shaped station—warning all travelers of the black hole's presence. Age had taken its toll, however; the upper few decks of Lighthouse Station—Uptown—were now dangerously radioactive. Even minutes could increase one's risk of cellular metastasis by a near-lethal percentage—but Dillinger didn't intend to live long enough to worry about it.
Uptown was the perfect place for illicit meet-ups of the sort that Dillinger's hired-gun business required. He picked up his wrist displacer and made some adjustments—it wouldn’t do to be taking parts of his ship’s deck with him when he teleported over to Uptown.
Outside his cabin’s porthole, The Cursed Corsair slipped into moorings beside Dillenger’s. This only added to his disquiet—he had no desire for the space pirates aboard that ship to mess up this potential job.
As Dillinger put on his displacer, the corner of his eye caught sight of a tired, scarred face—all his pain seemed reflected in the mirror in the corner of his quarters.
He looked old. He felt older. Was it the displacer, or was it life that aged him so fast?
"Don't wait up, sweetheart," he shouted to Pickering.
"I protest. As your agent I should be recording all of these..."
"Nope," Dillinger said. "Not this time." He checked his coil gun magazine—two dozen rounds should do—and triggered the displacer. His cabin on Guttersnipe shimmered out of existence and was replaced by the dim, abandoned hallway of central Uptown. He paused for a moment, listening, and hearing nothing, slowly walked towards a former read-stand he had used before. Keeping loose and prepared for anything, the mercenary pushed past the fallen sign and into the shop's unlit interior.
"A coil gun, how elega
nt," a voice in the shadows said. "Too civilized for someone of your reputation." The authority and self-confidence suggested it wasn’t The Cursed Corsair’s pirate captain or any of her crew.
Pointing his coil gun towards the voice, Dillinger slowly reached under the back of his leather jacket and felt for the plasma-snubber he carried there.
"What's up—friend?" Dillinger said.
"Furta vectigalibus est." The figure said as it stepped into a shaft of light.
Dillinger paused for a moment to absorb the importance of those words.
"Contrahendis ex principes. And your pronunciation is bloody awful," he finally said, relaxing and slipping the coil gun back into its shoulder holster. "Never expected to see you here, Inspector—Sector Senior Inspector now I hear."
The other man smiled and reached out a hand. "Good to see you again, Geoff."
"Sorry, Inspector, Geoff died—fifteen years ago tomorrow. I'm just plain old Johnny."
"Dillinger?"
"Trust me, I didn't choose the name," Dillinger said, pulling out his signal scrambler and double-checking they weren't being recorded. "So, what sort of job would you have for Johnny Dillinger?”
"It's the Duchess that I'm here about."
"Oh? The wreckage is still on Bolar—too hot to handle. I've seen it." The wreckage Dillinger had seen was so radioactive, her dead crew had to be cremated in the heart of a star.
"Not your old ship... er... Johnny. Duchess Grace of Dauntless III has been kidnapped."
An indescribable pain stabbed Dillinger straight through the heart. He reached out for the nearby bulkhead to steady himself. "Is she alive?" he whispered.
"Yes."
"Thank God. I—Christ, it's been so long..."
"Geoff—Johnny, she's being held by that damned cult. She needs rescuing by someone who can get the job done and not get the hostage shot."
"This is a job for someone else, Inspector." Dillinger looked away. "I'm too emotionally invested."
