Voyage

by E M Gale

  Of course, it was possible that they would not notice that some weapons were missing. When I had come up with this idea I had thought that it would be a good idea to find out who knew about the weapons, but now I knew that the ship was a military ship in disguise, I didn’t need to know who knew about them. I bet they all did. None of them were smugglers. I suspected that the smugglers and mercenaries who had been dumb enough to sign on to this voyage were the people who had deserted at Ragnarok IV.

  ‘I wonder if the techies know this is a military ship? The CTO must. As for the rest, I bet it never even occurs to them to ask what the ‘mercs’ are up to. I suppose if you don’t check for contraband and aren’t a smuggler yourself, this ship might well look like a smuggling ship.’

  Having set my garlic trap, I went on to the next task: tools.

  I sneaked into engineering, avoiding the night-shift workers who were in the break room, drinking tea so they were alert in case the engines started to make any strange noises. I paused, as I always did, by the engines to admire the Christmassy atmosphere of a dark room and lots of pretty-coloured lights reflecting off shiny brass alloy. Then the tool cupboard. I took the few I could recognise and headed back to my quarters.

  A few hours later, I had the back of the sofa ripped apart and a vague and utterly non-cuboidal box inside it for storage. My own mini-weapons locker. I stood up, rather satisfied with my work, took off the workman’s gloves I’d borrowed, wiped my hands down my trousers and looked around the room; there were bits of sofa material and wood everywhere.

  ‘I suck at this DIY stuff. I wonder if I could have persuaded Rob to help me?’

  * * *

  We’d spent the shift running around shooting plastic darts at each other. It was a lot of fun, truth be told. I was feeling far more confident than I had done before. I was getting the hang of this military stuff and I wasn’t so bad at all the exercises we were doing either. The shift had ended and we were all tidying up the toys–I mean, practice weapons.

  “Hey, didya hear?” asked Cliff. Then he sniffed loudly. “We’re making landfall the day after tomorrow.”

  “Oh, so soon?” I commented.

  He nodded.

  “It wouldn’t be Tortuga that we’re landing on, would it?”

  “How did you know that?” he asked, his eyes wide.

  I just smiled.

  ‘Well, that’s fifty thousand pelfre in the bank. Great.’

  “So, Clarke,” said Petey, pulling me away from my greatest fan and smiling smuttily. “You, er… busy tonight?”

  “Not really, what did you have in mind?” I replied with a saucy grin.

  * * *

  I was up. It was the graveyard shift again as I left the card-sharp to sleep.

  ‘I reckon it’s unlikely that anyone has been in the hidden weapons cupboard yet, but it is good to check it at least once a day. Just in case whoever has the job of keeping an eye on the weapons doesn’t head straight up to my quarters asking for their return. After all, I may not be the immediate suspect.’

  I was wandering along the docking quarters–daydreaming, the truth be told–when I noticed: it wasn’t there. I ran over, misted and hastily reformed on the other side of the door. I lit up the space with my lighter.

  ‘Nope, no garlic clove, no crushed garlic clove. And luckily, no trap to catch the person who put the garlic there. Oops, I ought to have thought about that before just reforming in this room. That was sloppy, Clarke.’

  I sighed at myself.

  ‘OK, OK. Someone’s come in here, seen it before they trod on it… and removed it. But how could they have seen it? They wouldn’t have expected it, so surely they would have trodden on it first, and if they did that there would still be some bit of crushed garlic here and a more pungent smell. OK.’

  I reformed on the other side of the door and looked around. No one. I could hear the hum of the ship’s engines, smell the goods in the goods bay and a faint, very faint, whiff of garlic.

  ‘Hmm. If I concentrate I think it is just about good enough to follow.’

  I wandered up the corridor, sniffing at the air and occasionally crouching down to sniff the ground. It was highly undignified, but it was the best way to follow the scent and there was no one around to observe me doing this. I followed the scent along the corridors, heading a little way up each of them to check which way the garlic thief had gone.

  ‘I didn’t know that I could… track things quite like this. I mean, I know that I have a good sense of smell, but I’ve never used it to follow… a trail, I guess. Meh, I don’t like this sort of language. I’m a vampire, not a dog. Yet even I have to admit, I am acting exactly like a dog at the moment.’

  Thinking that made me growl to myself, which was even more dog-like, and annoyed me.

  I stopped myself a second before it was too late. I was face to face with the door to the bridge. The trail went in there. In fact I could smell garlic coming from the plate where the garlic thief had used his or her palm print to open the door. I wasn’t allowed on the bridge and I didn’t want to be seen sniffing around the entrance, so I turned and wandered back to my quarters.

  ‘So… someone on the bridge checked up on the weapons, found the garlic and removed it. That was quick. Are they checking them every night? If they are, then I could stake out the goods bay all evening.’

  I thought for a moment about spending an evening watching the grey steel of the goods bay.

  ‘Not fun. I suppose I could play solitaire.’

  ‘But surely if they want to keep the weapons quiet then they won’t go and check them every night? It will draw undue attention. What on earth can they possibly need to check them for, anyway? Plus, if they’re checking them every night, then they must occasionally count them too, and surely they would already have noticed my theft?’

  I approached my quarters hesitantly. I only entered after I was reasonably certain that there was no one waiting there for me. Being extra-cautious, I didn’t open the door but misted under it.

  ‘Nothing, no traps, no one lying in wait.’

  ‘They may well check every night, but I find that unlikely. Maybe they check every week and I was just lucky with the day I chose to put the garlic down. But I don’t believe in that sort of coincidence. Which means that they removed the garlic because they knew I had put it there. So either they saw me–and I’m sure that no one saw me, because I ought to have smelt them and I’ve already checked that the ship doesn’t have any internal cameras or CCTV–or they smelt it. A vampire could smell it, I can. A human or an orc wouldn’t.’

  ‘Does that mean there’s another vampire on this ship? Could Price have stowed away and still be here? If he has, why has he not come to see me? I really can’t imagine him sneaking aboard and not appearing in my quarters.’

  I looked up and stared at the door, visualising him for a moment.

  ‘No, he’s not on the ship. So… another vampire? Why haven’t they revealed themselves to me yet? Given that Cleckley said vampires are promiscuous, surely they would have, well, jumped me at some point?’

  ‘Unless they’re an enemy, out to kill me? One of my future self’s enemies, perhaps? But if there’s such a vampire assassin on board, why on Earth would they be dicking around with my garlic trap, giving me a warning rather than coming after me? This really doesn’t make sense.’

  A thought occurred to me and I went through my weapons locker. All my stuff was still there, but I didn’t feel quite so confident about my hiding place now that someone had easily found my garlic trap.

  I started to pace up and down when the ship shook.

  ‘That’s not good. The damn thing is supposed to be inertia-damped, so something very big hit us or something exploded inside the ship.’

  I rushed over to my jury-rigged weapons locker and strapped the two silver swords across my back. As expected, the alarm went off.

  ‘That means we’ve been boarded or we’re about to be boarded.’

  I
misted under the door to my quarters and reformed on the other side, as it was the easiest way to get out and make sure I left my room locked. In the corridor ahead of me were about twenty open-mouthed pirates.

  ‘Ah, I guess they saw my magic trick then.’

  I reached for the swords.

  ‘I’ve only done a little dual-weapon work, but I think I’ll really need something to block with here, and these swords are short and light, easy to hold in one hand. All I have to do is make sure that the second sword doesn’t get in the way of the first. How hard can it be?’

  Two pirates, a human and a Kreegle, ran towards me screaming something unintelligible. I blocked the human’s high strike with the left-hand sword, dodged the Kreegle’s attack and swung the right sword quickly across them both and the two pirates fell to the ground.

  ‘Now… we have a narrow corridor. There is only one of me and about twenty of them, but they can only rush towards me two at a time without getting in each other’s way. And even then… I have two swords.’

  I lifted them up and smiled at the pirates. They looked somewhat freaked out, which had been the intended reaction. Two more rushed towards me, and as they came they were overtaken by something flying directly towards my head. I knocked it out of the way with my left-hand sword.

  ‘Hold on, was that a wooden stake? Shit, they have ranged weapons! Worse, anti-vampire ranged weapons.’

  I gulped. As one pirate lifted up his sword I stabbed him in the side with my left-handed sword on the backswing from the stake. A fraction of a second later I blocked the other one with my right-handed sword. I was making full use of my vampiric speed. I twisted my right arm from the block to run the second pirate through.

  The others were standing a few feet behind them. As my attackers fell to the floor, they hesitated. But I couldn’t hesitate. There were two rooms between me and them and the poor bastards in them weren’t mercenaries. Another wooden crossbow bolt went past my head. I didn’t need to dodge it–it went wide–but I wasn’t keen on being shot at with wood.

  ‘Well, here goes nothing.’

  I needed to get to the guy with the crossbow no matter what. I started walking and fell into the calm, unthinking feeling I usually did when I did the practice kata. I was using the corridor to my advantage. The pirates ran at me; the first three ran forward in a group but as one swung his sword he cut the eye of the pirate standing next to him and he fell backwards, screaming, into the pirates behind. Confusion ensued and the guy with the crossbow wasn’t able to get a shot at me whilst I fought the ones at the front.

  I moved forward, my body turned to the side to present a smaller target, alternately attacking with the left and right swords and blocking with the back arm. I finally got to the guy with the crossbow, dodged his final attack and cut his neck. That was it–all the pirates were dead, except the one who had been blinded, but as he was no longer a threat I left him be. I tucked the swords under my left arm and picked up the crossbow, intending to break it into a thousand pieces. Then I heard and smelt people running up the stairs and about thirty more pirates ran round the corner; that was a hell of a lot of pirates.

  The ones at the front were obviously prepared for corridor fighting as they were each carrying a crossbow and had a sword strapped to their waist. Their eyes went wide seeing me. I fired the crossbow. It was a one-handed repeating crossbow; small wooden darts were housed on either side so that they would drop down into the firing mechanism and it had a lever you pulled back to restring it after each shot. Unlike the gun, I was able to fire it fast. The bolts dropped with a smooth action and it didn’t look like it would jam. Since the pirates were not vampires, the crossbow bolts weren’t quite so deadly for them as for me, but I aimed for their eyes. My accuracy wasn’t that great, but the gun could fire as fast as I could pull the trigger and I could pull the trigger fast.

  Once I’d killed the guys with the crossbows and was aiming at the pirates behind them, there was a clunk-clank of weapons hitting the floor. I stopped firing in shock. The remaining pirates had all dropped their weapons and were holding their hands in the air, looking scared and shouting in a cacophony of languages. I was sure someone said, “Don’t shoot!”

  ‘Ah. Is this a trap then?’

  I waited. None of them moved.

  ‘Hmm. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with surrendering pirates. It’s never happened before.’

  The pirates were a mix of humans, Kreegle and a few tall, thin blue aliens. All of them looked grubby, all were sporting visible scars and tattoos and all smelt of sweat and fear.

  ‘Great. Now what do I do?’

  Footsteps came up the corridor behind them and behind me. I recognised the smell of the group behind me–that was B s . Since they were supposed to be on duty near the docking bay, I guessed they must have finished with the pirates down there and come up here to find the rest.

  “Get down on your knees!” Petey shouted from behind the group of pirates. The pirates obeyed, eyeing me uneasily and twisting to try to see the marines who were standing behind them. I guessed it was difficult to know which of us to keep an eye on: as the pirates knelt I could see that Petey was accompanied by the rest of D s  and half of A s .

  B s  were now level with me and pointing their guns at the unhappy pirates. Petey seemed to have the situation under control. I lowered the automatic crossbow and pulled the swords out from under my arms.

  ‘Hmm… covered in blood.’

  I shook my head at myself and dug out a handkerchief, wiped the swords quickly then sheathed them in the back holsters. This was a somewhat awkward manoeuvre to perform with the crossbow still in my hand, but I wasn’t dropping it. Petey was organising the pirates, although they were still paying a lot of attention to me, despite the fact I was ignoring them.

  None of the marines seemed to have noticed that my swords were silver ones from the hidden weapons locker. Once I had the swords put away, I could continue with what I had been about to do. I looked down at the crossbow.

  ‘A remarkable piece of engineering, and it worked better under quick fire than the damn guns. But I can’t let anything like this stay aboard the ship, even if I hide it in my quarters.’

  I grabbed both ends of the crossbow and twisted in opposite directions, turning the crossbow into kindling with a screech and a crack. I dropped the now-mangled crossbow.

  ‘Phew, no splinters. Maybe I ought to have worn gloves.’

  I took a step forward. The pirates shrank back, even though I wasn’t looking at them at all. I stamped on both of the dropped crossbows on the floor.

  At that point the alarm stopped ringing. The door to my right opened and one of the technicians stuck his head out, saw what was in the corridor, went pale and shut the door to his quarters.

  ‘Heh heh. It must have been terrifying to hear all that going outside your room and have no idea what it was.’

  “Is this the last of them then, Petey?” I asked.

  He nodded. He’d gotten the pirates to their feet and was marching them down the corridor. I looked around. I didn’t want to clean this up and anyway, I was D s , so I followed along with D s  and the pirates.

  “We wondered where you were,” said Cliff.

  ‘Ah.’

  “Well… I would have come down to meet you guys, but there were a hell of a lot of pirates in my way,” I commented.

  “Thought maybe you were getting your beauty sleep,” said Stonewall. Petey sniggered at that.

  ‘I wonder if Petey told them that he was the last person to see me?’

  “I’m just lucky they attacked when I was awake. It takes me ages to get up in the mornings,” I muttered.

  ‘I wonder what they are intending to do with the pirates? Surely they’re not going to space them? There really is no need for that; they surrendered.’

  We headed deeper down into the ship. I was at least intelligent enough not to ask about the fate of the pirates in front of them. We passed the merce
nary level and kept going down.

  ‘Oh, they’re gonna throw them in the brig then. Well, it is traditional.’

  I was right. The pirates were unceremoniously led into the cells. The doors were locked.

  I looked at my watch. “Well, guys, guess what? We’re on shift in twenty minutes.” They nodded.

  “Yup… guess we’d better go report in for clean-up duty,” said Grom, sounding about as unhappy about it as I was.

  ‘And I’d better drop off the swords first.’

  “Yeah. Uh, I’ll meet you guys down there,” I commented and jogged back to my quarters. The clean-up crew hadn’t arrived to clean up the corridor yet.

  ‘The bastards are waiting for the next watch. I can tell it’s going to be our job to do it.’

  I stashed the swords. And, since I didn’t really trust my hiding place any more, I took Kujjie’s letter and the vampirish notepad out of the box too.

  ‘I’d better keep those on me, since I can’t let anyone find them. I wish I could keep the swords on me too, but I think the marines would notice concealed swords.’

  I ran down for the start of a thoroughly unpleasant shift.

  Silly B-Movies

  The pirates had punched a hole in the ship with a boarding missile. Their idea had been to run into the ship, grab what they wanted, then space our ship–or only part of it if the bulkhead doors were shut–as they pulled their boarding craft out. So the techies had a busy job repairing that and we had the job of checking for hidden pirates and tidying up. I saw Rob walking around doing something with some of those funky tools he had to play with.

  “Hell of a lot of pirates in this attack,” I said, surveying goods bay two where the missile had landed. Oddly, the pirates hadn’t gone through any of the crates in the goods bay.

  ‘If they think this is a smuggling ship, and even if they don’t, they ought to have stolen the goods.’