Voyage

by E M Gale

  I frowned. “A report and a follow-up chat, maybe?”

  Mark shrugged. “I don’t know, but the double communications close in time made it easier to triangulate the position.”

  “So where are they going to?”

  “Well, I narrowed it down to a volume of space containing Tortuga, Tyr, Ac-Ray, and Malarok. And maybe Buc-Aj as well.”

  “Six planets? You couldn’t get closer than that?”

  “Clarke, I was working from the power draw of the transmitter movement, you’re lucky I have anything at all! And Tortuga’s a space station.”

  “So which political powers do they belong to? Did you look them up?”

  “Yeah.” He grinned. “I thought you’d want to know. Ac-Ray and Buc-Aj are joint ventures between Kreegle and human entrepreneurs, but they’re not allied with either the Solan or Kreegle Empires.”

  “Independents? Like the Allied Independent Worlds?”

  “What? No, all the AIW are near Earth. You didn’t know that?”

  I frowned. “They don’t exactly let the grunts look at the maps. Anyway, what about the other two?”

  “Ah, you’ve not heard of Tyr?”

  “No, should I have?”

  “Well, it’s an independent world close to Tortuga. Human. Non-Solan Empire.”

  “No Kreegle on this one?”

  “Nope. No Kreegle. And Malarok is an orcish colony.”

  I sighed. “So one spy is from Earth and the other could be reporting to the Kreegle or the orcs. Or some pirates.” I frowned. “So really we don’t know anything.”

  Mark shrugged. “We know there’s two spies, that’s something.”

  * * *

  My shift went by quickly. We did our usual team exercises. After a few days off crashing ships and duelling vampires, it was a welcome rest to go back to something I knew. And after the shift, there was gossip.

  “So, Clarke, Dracula owns Tortuga, doesn’t he?” asked Cliff. He looked at me curiously, then sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  ‘Ah, well, that. Rats. Now what to do about rumours? Deny everything.’

  “I wouldn’t know. But Dracula is a fictional character,” I said levelly.

  He didn’t look like he believed me. “Oh, c’mon, Clarke, the robot told me that Dracula owned the station.”

  I grinned. “Technically he didn’t.”

  Cliff looked confused. When he frowned it made his ears stick out more, somehow.

  “But…”

  “Too late, Clarke,” said Wright with a superior grin. “There’s no point in denying it. We all know that you’re either in with the owner, or a part-owner of Tortuga.”

  ‘Rats.’

  “Don’t be stupid. I don’t know what you are talking about. That was the first time I ever set foot on that bloody space station,” I said. That was technically true, but they didn’t believe me. Some of the other marines had wandered over and now I was surrounded by curious faces.

  “Clarke, you had your own huge docking bay full of ships and were followed around by a robot known to belong to the owner of Tortuga,” said Wright.

  “Do you own Tortuga?” Phil asked me, sounding shocked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Stupid robot, getting me into such trouble.’

  “No. Surely you’ve seen the owner?” I asked.

  “They say he appears from the shadows,” said Smith in his best horror-movie voice.

  “Wearing a big, black cloak so you can’t see his face,” said Elliottson.

  I shook my head. “And tell me, does loud organ music play every time he appears?” They shook their heads.

  ‘Thank goodness for small mercies.’

  “But the robot said it was named by Dracula,” said Cliff.

  ‘Gargh!’

  “That robot is senile and crazy,” I said, looking round at them. “He even called me a pirate!” This didn’t seem to dissuade them much.

  “But you must know Dracula, right?” persisted Cliff. I thought having discovered that there was a vampire called Dracula, he desperately wanted one of his movies to be correct and for me to know him personally.

  “Dracula is a fictional character,” I said hollowly. I seemed to be saying that a lot nowadays.

  ‘What sort of crazy, extravagant vampire decides to call himself Dracula?’

  “Ah, c’mon, Clarke, we know you know him,” said Wright.

  ‘Meh. Hey, aren’t I supposed to be a super-tough and scary two-hundred-year-old vampire? I don’t have to put up with this.’

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you are talking about. I know nothing about the owner of Tortuga. At all.” I glared at them all in turn. They didn’t seem to be especially scared.

  ‘Damn.’

  “So you’re not the owner? You don’t dress up in a big black cloak and sneak around the station to scare and awe the punters?” asked Sticks.

  ‘What?’

  “You don’t think I couldn’t scare and awe them without a stupid cloak?” I remarked.

  “Nah, it can’t be Clarke, the owner’s a guy,” said Elliottson.

  “Yeah, but if she wore a cloak,” said Smith.

  “I dunno. I think even in a cloak you’d be able to tell she was a woman. I mean gaffer tape can only do so much,” said Bron with a grin. I stared at him.

  ‘Gaffer tape? Ouch.’

  “Gaffer tape and big cloak, that’s hardly a great disguise, is it?” I remarked.

  ‘Honestly, I could do better than that, if I had to disguise myself.’

  “Well, if you’re not the owner, who is Dracula?” asked Smith.

  “Ah,” I said, smiling, “that’s an easy one.”

  They all stared at me expectantly.

  “Dracula is a fictional character.”

  Some of them groaned. Cliff looked confused and Wright shook his head at me. Petey wandered up to join the crowd.

  “But what about Alucard?” protested Cliff.

  “What about Alucard?” I said.

  “Is Alucard the owner?”

  “Apparently. That’s what I heard on the station anyway.”

  Cliff frowned at me. “But he’s Dracula! In disguise!” The marines were nodding along with Cliff now.

  “It’s hardly a good disguise, is it. Just reversing the name and swanning around in a silly cloak,” I said.

  “No, hardly a disguise at all,” said Stonewall. He was looking rather intelligent as he reasoned this out. “But then your disguise wasn’t much cop either. You didn’t even change your name. Maybe vampires just aren’t that good at disguises.”

  ‘Oh, how silly, vampires have to be good at disguises.’

  “Ekralc,” said Cliff thoughtfully, trying out my name backwards.

  ‘Not the best name, is it? Hardly rolls off the tongue.’

  “It’s ’cos vamps can’t lie, so even a simple deception like that is enough to fool them,” said Wright.

  “Can’t lie? That’s not true,” said Elliottson. “Is it?”

  ‘First I’ve heard.’

  “No, they can’t break their word.”

  “Vampires are too busy showing off to hide,” said Petey drily.

  ‘Eh? Alucard was showing off, but me? I’m not showing off.’

  “I do not show off. Alucard might be an over-the-top and hammy actor, but I am not,” I said.

  “So why did you prance around dressed up like a bride of Dracula followed around by one of his robots?” said Wright.

  ‘Bride of Dracula?’

  “Obviously, I didn’t expect you to recognise my robot, and I was not dressed up like a ‘bride of Dracula’, I was just wearing one of my pretty dresses. I am a woman, you know. Occasionally, I like to wear a dress.”

  “One of your pretty dresses,” started Wright, “that didn’t look new, that you’ve never worn on this ship, so must have had stashed at Tortuga. A place you said you had never visited before.” The marines were nodding.

  ‘Well, how fu
nny, that was the truest thing I’ve told them. Still, nice reasoning there, Wright.’

  “Your robot?” said Petey. “I thought the robot belonged to the owner. Do you own Tortuga then?”

  ‘Oh… now we’re going around in circles.’

  “She says she doesn’t,” said Wright suspiciously.

  “Dracula owns it,” said Cliff. “But he’s probably her sire or husband or something.” I stared at him. Then I sighed loudly.

  “Dracula is a fictional character,” I said sternly. But it didn’t help. They were all staring at me.

  ‘How the hell to get out of this? Hmm.’

  “Look, I don’t own Tortuga. I just park some pretty ships there,” I said. “And I had an annoying robot because I pay so much money to park my ships there that I get a complementary guide robot. There is more than one, you know.”

  They nodded at that.

  ‘Actually, that made good sense. Why the hell didn’t I think of that story before? I have been impersonating someone rather rich.’

  “Oh? And how do you have such a huge private docking bay and all those ships?” said Cliff. I sighed.

  “Fool, think who she is and how old she is, she must be loaded,” said Smith to him. Cliff pulled an ‘oh yeah’ face and grinned at me.

  “What’s she doing on a job like this, then?” asked Wright.

  “Well, it is hardly about the money, is it?” I said.

  ‘How funny. Lack of money is the exact reason I’m here. I suppose, given that I now know that my future self is rich, I could have disembarked at Tortuga and nicked her money. But even if the robot said it was my money, I can’t view it that way and I doubt she would either. I consider that I’ve nicked stuff from my future self, not used stuff I was entitled to.’

  “Yeah, I guess so,” mused Stonewall.

  ‘Hmm, I think I know exactly how to solve this one.’

  “Let’s head to the pub, gentlemen, the nice one, perhaps?” I said.

  “Yeah, they really take the piss with how much they pay us to do this,” said Smith.

  We walked into the main bar. The marines were distracted from awkward questions on the journey by their wage-related gripes, and I bought a round of drinks in the bar to keep them that way.

  ‘Well, I think that’s the end of that.’

  I spent a round’s worth of drinking time listening to the marines griping about pay, the cost of beer, insufficient leave and benefits. It was all quite dull. We moved on to the second round. It seemed that they had forgotten all about Alucard and Tortuga.

  Then someone I’d not met before walked into the bar. Which was odd, as I hadn’t known we’d taken on any new people at Tortuga. His reaction on seeing me was odder. He stopped in the middle of the room and stared at me, the colour draining from his face as his heart rate rose. I stared at him, and he started filling the room with the scent of his adrenaline.

  ‘Well, he obviously recognises me–as Clarke, I would guess, rather than as a random vampire. Hmm…’

  He outwardly calmed himself down, but I could tell that inside he wasn’t calm at all. He headed over to our table.

  “May I have a word with you, please?” he asked me quietly. The marines were still griping and beered up so I nodded and led him to my favourite window table.

  ‘Does he expect me to know who he is? He’s not a vampire, I can tell that. Is he someone my future self knows? How the hell would I fake that?’

  He sat down opposite me. I frowned at him, saying nothing, and I noticed that he got even more panicked the longer I said nothing for.

  I used the silence to check him out. He was broad-shouldered and muscly, below average height, so shorter than me, but I could still see him being a soldier or a marine. He had blue eyes, designer stubble and sandy blond hair which waved back from his face and was longer than a soldier would wear it. He had a tan as well. Together with his hair, it was a surfer dude look. I would have said he must spend a lot of time planetside sunbathing, but the muscles across his back and shoulders showed that he didn’t laze about. He was wearing stone-coloured utility trousers, a white tee-shirt and a khaki over-shirt that had lots of pockets that bulged with their contents. Over the top he wore a small silver crucifix that set off his tan. He finished the outfit off with a leather belt with pouches attached to it that probably contained useful things like penknives or torches or USB sticks. He looked Californian to me, an outdoorsy type. In the twenty-first century I would have said that he was either a surfer or Silicon Valley geek who had missed his calling as a surfer.

  He was cute. Very handsome, actually, other than the look of worry on his face. Fear was not attractive, so I smiled to put him at ease.

  “Uh… well. Sorry for being so presumptuous. I guess I’d better introduce myself,” he started.

  ‘OK, he doesn’t expect me to know who he is then.’

  “My name is Jake Brannigan,” he said.

  I nodded as if I had expected him to say that, and let a flirtatious smile creep up the corner of my mouth. “You seem to know who I am,” I remarked, whilst observing him.

  ‘I wonder if I can put him at ease by flirting with him? Maybe we can get over the ’you’re a vampire’ thing and move onto the ‘so what are you doing this evening?’ thing. Or even ‘are you busy right now?’ Still, from the look of the crucifix, he’s a Catholic and I’ve not had great experiences with Catholic boys called Jake. Then again, that was technically over two hundred years ago and I’m not thirteen any more.’

  “Yes. And I just want to say that I would not have sought passage on this ship if I had known that you were on it,” said Brannigan.

  I frowned at that.

  ‘Hmm, well, I’m undercover. So… who is he and what is he up to?’

  I smiled at him again. It didn’t put him at ease. I flicked my eyes over him, checking him out and giving him suggestive looks.

  “Spill it,” I said, but I said it nicely.

  “OK, but please promise that you will hear me out, rather than just killing me straight away.”

  ‘Kill him? Why?’

  I raised my eyebrows and stared at him, my mouth slightly open.

  ‘Why does he think I would kill him? I’m thinking about seducing him.’

  “Huh, I’ll do my best,” I said. He gulped.

  ‘This is kind of funny. This big, strong, built guy is obviously scared of me. Well, he knows I am a vampire, that much is for sure.’

  “OK.” He looked like he was gathering his thoughts and his courage. He smiled at me nervously. When I didn’t smile back, the smile faded on his face. I didn’t move. I just waited. I was freaking him out on purpose now. “Right then. Here goes…” He gulped, then took a deep breath. “I am not actually an independent trader.”

  ‘Ah, someone else in disguise as a smuggler then. I guess that’s why he’s on this ship. Thinking about it, we haven’t had any real smugglers on this ship. Can all the genuine smugglers and pirates see through the marines’ less-than-brilliant disguise?’

  “I am a hunter.” Brannigan looked like he expected me to know what that was.

  ‘A hunter? A hunter of what?’

  Brannigan smelt scared.

  ‘A vampire hunter, perhaps?’

  My eyes went wide.

  ‘Oh, dear. OK, that’s why he wanted me to wait until the end.’

  “A bounty hunter,” he said quickly, understanding my reaction. I narrowed my eyes at him.

  ‘Oh? Is that better than a vampire hunter? I suppose it depends if he wants to collect on the bounty on me.’

  “Er… who specialises in vampires,” he blustered.

  I gave him my best stony stare. He faltered, gulped and continued.

  “But I’m not after you,” he said.

  ‘Huh, good!’

  “Why not? The last I heard there was six million pelfre on my head,” I remarked icily.

  “Yeah, I’m not that stupid,” he said, nodding.

  I raised my eyebrows at t
hat.

  “‘The difference between a successful hunter and a dead one is picking bounties they can collect.’” He sounded liked he was quoting someone else.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

  “Well, I figured you’d find out anyway.” He smiled at me again. I didn’t return it. He bravely tried to not let his smile falter again, but it did and instead a sweat broke out on his forehead.

  “And if you thought I was after you, you would kill me, so I thought I ought to tell you straight away that I wasn’t. Which means you can only kill me because either you don’t like bounty hunters, or you don’t want me to go after who I am going after.”

  I nodded at that.

  ‘Well, he’s clever enough to reason that it is a better idea to tell me this stuff now, in a well-lit and public place, than pretend he hasn’t noticed what I am and wait until I figure out what he is.’

  I leant back in my chair and sighed. He had saved me a few hours of sneaking around to find out what he was up to. That was unless I didn’t trust that he was telling the truth. But the anxiety smell coming off him in waves, together with his general nervousness, told me he was telling the truth.

  “So, who are you after?” I asked.

  Brannigan breathed out a heavy sigh. I thought it was a sigh of relief. “Ah, I’m looking for a vampire called Alcibiades.” He eyed me to see how I reacted to the name.

  ‘Who? That’s a funny name. Is that Greek? Or Latin? It’s got to be one or the other.’

  “But not to kill him or capture him, you understand, I just want to question him.”

  ‘Good luck.’

  “Vampires aren’t known for being cooperative,” I said.

  “Yes. That’s true.”

  “So how are you going to question this guy?”

  Brannigan took a handkerchief out of a pocket and wiped it across his brow. “I’m hoping that he will cooperate.”

  ‘Huh. Fat chance.’

  “Why?”

  “Because the contract I’m planning to collect on is Socrates. I need Alcibiades to help me find him,” he said.

  “Yes, and why would this guy help you?”