by Mike Brooks
Drift decided that this was not the time to admit that he’d gone all in on the final hand simply because he’d been getting spooked by Roman and his companions and wanted out of there.
‘As to what you can help me with,’ Orlov continued, ‘are you familiar with the planet Uragan?’
Drift frowned. ‘That’s in this system, isn’t it? Further out, some sort of mining planet? About the only thing I know about it is that I have no plans to go there.’
‘An understandable position,’ Orlov nodded. ‘It is not a world for sightseers, certainly. My government plunders the crust for metals and the populace shelters underground from the toxic atmosphere. It is …’ He paused for a second, selecting the correct word. ‘… grim. However, I need a piece of information from a man who works in Uragan City, whom I will not name unless and until you accept this job. He cannot transmit it to me, and I certainly cannot go there myself. I need someone to retrieve this information and bring it back to me, in person. They will need to get in and out again before the next of Uragan’s regular hurricanes hits the mining complex in two days standard, at which point no shuttle travel will be possible through the atmosphere for roughly seventy-two hours.’
‘And you don’t have anyone in your own employ who could do this?’ Drift said dubiously. ‘Forgive me, Mr Orlov, but this sounds like something far too simple to need an outside contractor.’
Orlov’s face pulled into a grimace, his lips twisting as though he’d bitten down on something sour. ‘Captain, when you sit as high as I do, there are always people trying to take the chair out from under you. I have rivals who are trying to infiltrate my organisation; I say “trying”, but I have no doubt they have succeeded in some part. How large a part, I am not sure. Of one thing, however, I am sure: none of these rivals have had any reason to try to bring you into their service, as you yourself were not aware that I was offering you employment until just now. Also, you will need to leave more or less immediately, so they will have no chance. You have some small reputation as a reliable contractor, the job itself is not taxing, and I will pay you the sum of 100,000 stars if the information I require reaches me before the next storm on Uragan has begun to lift.’
Drift nodded thoughtfully. One hundred thousand stars was a thoroughly respectable sum for a few days of courier work, for all that the currency was worth less, unit for unit, than the USNA or Europan dollars. Sure, he’d just made forty-odd, but he had no illusions that poker was a future career for him. Orlov’s proposal, on the other hand, sounded like his bread and butter. He did have one concern though, given the source.
‘Is this job illegal?’
Orlov’s face twitched into a small smile again. ‘There are certain parties who might not wish me to have the information you would be retrieving, it’s true. They concern shipping schedules, cargo destinations and the like.’
Drift frowned. He’d heard no stories of pirates operating in the Rassvet System, and surely that was the only reason to know a cargo and destination? Then he remembered who he was dealing with, and comprehension dawned. ‘And the reason you want them before the storm lifts is so you can know how much of what has been mined recently, to get a head start on buying and selling shares before the next shipment can actually take off?’
‘You are a perceptive man, Captain,’ Orlov nodded, ‘but the information would be valuable only to someone with enough financial capacity to take advantage of it, and so time-sensitive that you would struggle to find another interested party with that capacity before it was useless. Hence I am confident that you would find it simpler to come straight back to me for your payment as opposed to, ah, “shopping around”. Whereas should I choose the wrong employee from my organisation to retrieve this piece of information for me …’
‘… they might know exactly who to go to with it, and buy their way into someone else’s good graces,’ Drift finished, nodding in his turn. He turned the offer over in his head and failed to find any obvious flaws. The logic for his selection was sound enough, the payment was generous but not so high that he was concerned Orlov was trying to blind him with greed, and the job sounded feasible and only mildly illegal, if that. Most importantly, Orlov had no history with him and therefore presumably no reason to set him up.
‘As a small additional matter,’ Orlov murmured, sipping his drink, ‘while you are of course being financially compensated for your time and effort, you would also have my gratitude for your assistance. It is not limitless, of course, but may be of some small use should you ever find yourself inconvenienced somewhere my name carries weight.’
Drift scratched at the skin around his right eye. Perhaps this was actually a good idea, given that his crew’s loyalty was still somewhat up in the air. Nicolas Kelsier had employed him in years gone by, then had resurfaced suddenly to blackmail him into transporting a mystery package to Amsterdam by threatening to reveal his darkest secret to his crew. The package had turned out to be an armed nuclear bomb, and in the aftermath of that spectacular shitstorm his big secret had come out anyway: Ichabod Drift, freelance merchant captain, had once upon a time been known as Gabriel Drake, ruthless pirate. What was more, he’d had to admit that instead of dying with his crew, as the galaxy thought, he’d actually opened all the airlocks on the Thirty-Six Degrees and let them suffocate, making it look like an accident, then jettisoned in an escape pod.
It was a betrayal of trust, which had been haunting him for over a decade, and it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that it hadn’t gone down well with his current crew.
Apirana had nearly strangled him, and Rourke had threatened to shoot him. Kuai had declared his intention to leave, and his sister Jia had been teetering. They’d stayed for long enough to take Kelsier down before the old bastard could eliminate the only people who knew he’d tried to nuke Amsterdam, and Drift had promised them a share of the funds they’d gleaned, but the simple truth was that once this money was gone he didn’t know if they’d stick around.
He liked his crew and didn’t want to lose them, let alone find new ones. They’d have little reason to refuse a nice simple job with a decent payday, and it might be exactly the sort of thing needed to ease everyone back in to being a team again. If this went well then maybe anyone still harbouring ideas of leaving the Keiko could be persuaded that it wasn’t such a bad way to make a living after all.
Besides, if Drift had been afraid to take a gamble he’d have never set foot in the Grand House. He stuck his hand out with a smile.
‘Mr Orlov, I do believe we have ourselves a deal.’
URAGAN
‘THAT,’ JIA CHANG said thoughtfully as she brought the Keiko into geostationary orbit and activated the chime that called all crew to the cargo bay, ‘is one ugly-ass piece of rock.’
‘Congratulations, Ichabod,’ Rourke said, clapping the Captain on the shoulder, ‘you’ve found us a planet that looks like a giant bruise.’
Jenna McIlroy, the youngest member of the Keiko’s crew, made her way over to the viewshield and peered out at Uragan. The light of the Rassvet System’s star was behind them, and Uragan City, their destination, was in the middle of one of its fourteen-hour days (not that the solar cycle mattered much to the inhabitants, who almost never saw natural light anyway). Sure enough, the planet’s atmosphere was an ugly yellowish-brown – large amounts of sulphur dioxide, according to the records – and reminded her of nothing so much as pus.
‘It might not look like much,’ Drift admitted, ‘but we’re not here for the aesthetics. We’re here for business, and business waits for no one. And nor will that,’ he added, pointing to a menacing swirl in the clouds visible even from this far up: the next ravaging storm due to strike. ‘That’s our timescale, ladies, and it’s closing in. Let’s go and find Mr Orlov’s contact.’ He glanced over at Jenna. ‘Do we have a landing window?’
‘Seventy-two minutes until we can start final approach,’ Jenna replied, checking her self-built wrist console. ‘I could always bump us up the list a
bit, if you want?’
‘No,’ Drift said firmly, shaking his head. ‘I appreciate the thought, but we should be able to get this done without breaking any laws, so let’s not jeopardise it with any unnecessary jiggery-pokery.’
Jenna raised her eyebrows. ‘“Jiggery-pokery”?’
‘What?’ Drift protested, looking mildly hurt. ‘I like that word!’
Jia rotated around on her chair. ‘Is that just one word, or actually two—’
‘Move.’ Rourke clapped her hands twice. ‘C’mon, we’ve got over a standard hour to wait before we can break atmo, you can all discuss language once we’re on the Jonah.’
They trailed through the corridors of the Keiko, down towards the main cargo bay where their shuttle sat. Jenna had often thought it was in some way a waste of the cavernous space to have most of it taken up by a shuttle with a far smaller capacity, but that was simply how it was. Humanity had developed an Alcubierre drive that could compress space–time and allow travel far faster than the speed of light, but the doughnut-shaped structure had to encircle the ship’s midriff and no one had yet succeeded in constructing one that wouldn’t disintegrate upon entering even a moderately thick atmosphere. As a result, if you ever wanted to be able to land on a planet without relying on someone else’s transport, you needed a separate shuttle of your own … and that meant you needed to store it somewhere while you travelled between stars.
Drift palmed open the airlock and they stepped out into the cargo bay. Jenna looked up at the grey and somewhat battered shape of the Jonah with almost equal parts fondness and loathing. The two ships felt far more like home than they had done but she’d been brought up on Franklin Minor, a planet which, like New Samara, had needed very little terraforming before it was suitable for human habitation. As a result, she’d spent the first twenty or so years of her life used to open skies and wind on her cheeks. The Keiko was just spacious enough that she could feel a little like she was in one of her old university buildings, even if most of the room was given over to functionality. The Jonah, on the other hand, was unmistakably a small, enclosed tin can in space.
‘Back into the rat trap, eh?’ a voice rumbled, and Apirana ‘Big A’ Wahawaha appeared from around the other side of the shuttle. The big Maori was an imposing, not to mention intimidating, sight. Possibly a shade closer to seven feet tall than six, and at least three times Jenna’s weight, his hands could form fists nearly as big as her head with battered, scarred knuckles attesting to their historical use. Then there was the tā moko, the dark whorls of tattoos spiralling across his face, which lent his features an exotic look to Jenna’s eyes when in repose, and a truly terrifying one to anyone’s when angered. That was the point, to a certain extent: for all that they were a mark of his heritage, Apirana had them done when he was an angry teenager being used as muscle for a local gang back on Old Earth. His hold on his temper was better these days, although not perfect, but his sheer presence had caused many a potential fight to stop before it even started.
He was also, to Jenna’s mind, the best company on board. She liked Drift, and was grateful for his willingness to give her a berth and a job when she’d been desperate to find passage away from the Franklin system, but his mind was like quicksilver. It was forever flitting from scheme to scheme, hard to follow and impossible to truly keep up with. There was a knot of secrets in there too, and she didn’t think for a moment that his previous identity as Gabriel Drake was the end of them. There was also the fact that he was entirely capable of shooting people dead without an apparent second thought, should the need arise. No, the Captain was not just all smiles and camaraderie.
Rourke was as unreadable as a blank steel wall and about as friendly: a former Galactic Intelligence agent who’d abandoned working for the USNA government for reasons she chose not to share, she was ferociously competent but hardly warm. As for the Chang siblings, Jia was pleasant enough most of the time but a raging egomaniac when it came to her flying skills, and Kuai had apparently healed well enough from his gunshot wound to ease out of the mild depression he seemed to have fallen into and start being passive-aggressively pessimistic about everything again.
‘It’s not that bad,’ Jenna laughed, honestly enough, ‘at least it’s just a surface trip this time.’
‘A surface trip down to a subterranean warren where everyone speaks Russian,’ Apirana replied, pulling a face. As a New Zealander by birth, he too had grown up under the open sky, although he’d had longer to get used to being enclosed than she had – including over a decade in prison on Farport for various crimes which he’d declined to list, but was open enough to admit had included violence and drug-running offences.
‘Everyone on, c’mon,’ Drift urged from behind them, making shooing motions with his hands and looking around as though to check he hadn’t forgotten anything. ‘Everyone got what they need?’
‘What do we need?’ Jia shouted from the top of the ramp. ‘Thought this was going to be a cakewalk?’
‘That’s the theory,’ Drift replied, ‘but when was the last time something went exactly as planned? You got your pilot hat?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well then,’ the Captain beamed up at her, ‘we’ll be fine, won’t we?’ He looked down at Jenna and his gaze slid to her bare right wrist. It was normally taken up by a chunky metal bracelet she usually pretended was a health monitor, but was in fact a device she’d designed and built herself to knock out electronics. ‘Not taking the EMP?’
‘I don’t much fancy locking us into an underground prison,’ Jenna smiled at him.
‘I’m glad,’ Drift said, flashing a grin. ‘I’m not certain if I’d trust the backup power relays in a Red Star mining complex.’ He turned away and headed up the ramp, leaving Jenna to follow.
‘It’s in your bag, ain’t it?’ Apirana said softly at her shoulder.
Jenna nearly stopped in her tracks and deliberately didn’t look down at her satchel. ‘Was it that obvious?’
Apirana shrugged. ‘I might not be smart like you, but I can spot an evasion when I hear one. Kinda surprised the Captain didn’t, to be honest, but I guess he’s got other things on his mind.’
‘I just feel better with it around,’ Jenna said, trying not to feel guilty. She walked the last few steps into the cargo hold and hit the control that raised the ramp behind them. ‘It’s not like I’m going to set it off for no reason.’
‘Nah, I know that,’ Apirana assured her. He smiled. ‘An’ I won’t tell, either.’
A distinct, muffled rumbling started up, and the deck vibrated ever so slightly beneath their feet. Kuai had started up the main engines, which meant they were about to leave the Keiko. Above them, an intercom speaker crackled before exuding Drift’s exasperated voice.
+Jenna? Get your narrow little butt up here, will you? These inconsiderate bastards have got all their systems in Russian.+
Jenna frowned and picked up the cargo bay handset. ‘What about the translation protocol? We were using it for New Samara!’
+Yeah, well, someone’s pressed something and it looks like it’s reset to Swahili.+
She sighed, and rolled her eyes for Apirana’s benefit. ‘Time to go babysit. Strap in; I hear Uragan’s windy even when it’s not blowing a full storm, and you know what Jia’s flying is like.’
‘I’ve been on this boat the best part o’ six years, and she ain’t killed me yet,’ Apirana snorted, then grimaced as the Jonah lurched forwards out of the Keiko’s forward doors. ‘On second thoughts …’
They were still on time for their re-entry window, even with the small delay while Jenna adjusted their systems so everyone could once more read what they needed to, and Uragan began growing beneath them as Jia angled them down into its thick, hostile atmosphere. Jenna had found herself clutching at her terminal with whitened knuckles during her first couple of descents on the Jonah, but had soon worked out that for all her arrogance and bluster, Jia was, pretty much, every bit as good a pilot as she boasted.
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Even so, it seemed that Uragan was testing Jia, judging by the fact that roughly halfway through their entry she snatched her ‘pilot hat’ up and jammed it on her head. It had a thick, furry lining, with a peak at the front and a fold-down piece on each side, presumably to keep one’s ears warm. Jia would never admit to it, but it was clear that she regarded it as some form of lucky charm in much the same way as her brother would absent-mindedly play with his dragon pendant.
‘That bad, huh?’ Drift asked brightly as the cockpit tilted sideways thanks to another gust.
‘Shut up, bái chī.’ Jia adjusted thrusters or flaps or … something – Jenna had about as much idea about piloting as Jia did about slicing into high-security information systems – and they started to level out a little. ‘O-kay, should be below the worst now. You wanna make yourself useful and check what berth we’re getting?’
‘Me?’ Drift looked hurt. ‘Your Russian’s better than mine!’
‘Yeah, but I’m flying,’ Jia replied shortly. ‘Don’t bother asking Kuai, either; I need him concentrating. Don’t wet your pants, they’ll have a translation program. Probably.’
Drift muttered something uncomplimentary in Spanish under his breath and opened a comm channel. ‘Uragan City Port Authority, this is the shuttle Jonah requesting permission to land, over.’
There was a short pause, then the speakers crackled into life with the stilted, pre-recorded voice of the Jonah’s own translation program.
+Shuttle Jonah, this is Hurricane City spaceport. Please state your language of choice so we may calibrate translation software.+
