Dark Sky (Keiko)

by Mike Brooks

  ‘Damn you, Moutinho!’ Drift snarled. ‘We could have left your crew high and dry!’ Which was true enough, so long as the ‘we’ included Muradov, whose decision it had been.

  +Which is why I’m not telling Jack to blow you to pieces with another missile,+ Moutinho pointed out. +Adeus, Ichabod.+ The transmission ceased as the ramp whined shut, and the Pouco Jacare banked away into the swirling clouds with a roar of manoeuvring thrusters audible even over the screaming wind.

  ‘So that’s it then,’ Jia said from beside Drift’s right elbow, her voice barely audible through the muffling effect of the rebreather and over the wind. ‘We’re fucked.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Drift growled, more out of stubbornness than anything else.

  ‘We’re about to get shot, man!’ Jia protested, gesturing back towards the office door. ‘They’re gonna be here any second!’

  ‘They cannot breathe in this!’ Muradov cut in, tapping his rebreather. ‘We shut the door, we get something to barricade it, and we dare them to come in and get us!’

  ‘What, and freeze to death instead?’ Jia demanded, throwing her arms up. ‘That’s just a different flavour of fucked!’

  ‘Are your crew always this upbeat?’ Muradov asked Drift. The Uragan had his gun in his hand again, and seemed to be thoroughly himself once more.

  ‘They’re an absolute riot,’ Drift replied, slapping the shorter man on the shoulder. ‘No pun intended.’ He looked around at the Changs. ‘Jia, grab some of the big chairs from out there, I don’t think this desk is moving anywhere. Chief, take another look out of the garden window and see if they’ve actually got through the gate yet, or just damaged it. Kuai—’

  The little mechanic was pointing past him, out into the storm. Drift whirled, expecting to see the shape of the Pouco Jacare dropping back down and a crackle in his ear as a preface to Moutinho saying he’d changed his mind and was going to blow them up anyway. Sure enough, there were running lights approaching unsteadily through the storm, and he opened his mouth to shout for everyone to run for it.

  But the lights were configured slightly differently. In fact, they almost looked like …

  OUT OF THE STORM

  +CAPTAIN, ARE YOU there?+ It was Jenna’s voice in his ear, coming in on the Jonah’s private frequency that his comm was programmed to automatically accept.

  ‘Yes!’ he shouted, fighting the urge to jump up and down and wave his arms, joy warring with relief in his chest. ‘Yes, damn it, I am!’

  +Jia?+

  +You bet your ass!+ Jia’s voice crackled over the comm now she was included in the broadcast network, echoing the more muffled words he heard coming from behind her mask.

  +Then get ready to get aboard ay-sap,+ Jenna said, her voice somewhat grim, +because A. and Tamara are having a hell of a job flying this thing.+

  +Gotcha!+ Jia replied, pushing Drift aside as the Jonah’s bulky shape materialised out of the maelstrom. Sure enough, where the Pouco Jacare had been shaky but clearly controlled, Drift’s shuttle seemed barely able to keep upright, let alone on course. He watched with his heart in his mouth as it veered drunkenly, overcompensating sluggishly to gusts with too-enthusiastic blasts from the thrusters, but a crack of light appeared at the front and kept widening as the ramp began to lower.

  +Hold her steady!+ Jia yelled, setting herself for a running jump.

  +Trying!+ was the curt response, a taut voice which Drift took a second to recognise as Tamara Rourke’s, so great was the stress in it.

  +Well, try harder!+

  The ramp was nearly down now, with Jenna visible at the top and holding onto the control panel for support as the floor repeatedly tilted under her. Jia clearly didn’t trust in her crewmates’ abilities to keep it in the right place for long because she made a leap as the Jonah lurched forwards, launching herself into mid-air.

  Just as the wind gusted viciously again.

  The shuttle rocked to one side a little, but Jia’s slight frame had nothing like the Jonah’s bulk and her headlong leap was abruptly turned into a sideways trajectory. Drift reached out reflexively and uselessly as his pilot windmilled her arms and legs desperately, seeking some purchase on the air and failing to find it.

  She did, however, just manage to snag the hydraulic support on the far side of the Jonah’s ramp with one hand.

  +Fuck! Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfu—+

  Jia latched on with her other hand almost immediately but the Jonah wasn’t holding steady in a wind still gusting strongly enough to blow her sideways, and she seemed unable to haul herself to safety. Drift backed up a couple of steps and prepared to jump, trying to swallow the bile churning in his throat as the ramp swayed in front of him and doing his best to block thoughts of the potential fall from his mind.

  He was taken by surprise, therefore, when a shape in politsiya blacks sped past him and vaulted athletically across the gap between window and ramp, landing with a sure-footed and metallic thud. Alim Muradov crouched low on the ramp and splayed himself to minimise his own risk of being blown off, then reached out to grab Jia’s wrist and hauled the pilot to him with a strength that belied his modest build.

  +Captain, is he with us?+ Jenna asked, sounding a little confused.

  ‘He is now,’ Drift confirmed. He turned to face the office door and raised his gun, just in case there were any particularly enthusiastic rebels closing on them: he didn’t fancy taking another bullet in the back, armavest or no. ‘Off you go, Kuai.’

  Kuai muttered something in Mandarin which Drift didn’t quite catch, but didn’t delay in making his leap. Muradov, now upright and holding onto one of the hydraulic stanchions with his right hand, caught the little mechanic and steadied him before sending him up the ramp after Jia.

  +Get up to the cockpit,+ Jenna told the younger Chang as she reached her, then pulled something down which had been wedged into place next to the control panel. +Here: you’ll need this.+

  Jia snatched it from her eagerly. Drift realised what it was as she pulled it down over her head, and laughed. ‘You saved the goddamn pilot hat?’

  +We grabbed a couple of bags from the hotel,+ Jenna’s voice replied. +Hadn’t had a chance to look in them until just now.+

  ‘Captain!’ Muradov shouted from the ramp, barely audible through his rebreather mask and the howl of the gale. ‘Are you coming?’

  Drift smiled despite himself. Finally, after everything going wrong, they were—

  A politsiya-issue gas mask appeared in the office doorway above a rifle’s barrel. He squeezed his trigger instinctively and the mask’s wearer ducked back into cover as Drift’s bullet chewed into the door. ‘Ah, shit.’

  He turned and ran, making the leap as Muradov began to retreat towards the cargo bay. There was a heart-stopping moment as a dim, yellow gulf opened beneath Drift’s feet and the wind tried to throw him sideways, but he landed on the ramp. It was hard on his knees and cold on his hands as he sprawled forwards, but it was reassuringly solid beneath him. At least, for the moment: he holstered his pistol and started scrambling up the ramp before either the weather or pilot error tilted it. ‘We’re all on, go!’

  +Gotcha, Cap,+ Jia’s voice replied. +Come on, get out the way … no, the other way, I need that chair!+

  There was a faint lurch and then the Jonah started to swing up and away from Governor Drugov’s ruined office, far more smoothly than it had been moving before. As the shuttle turned, Drift caught a quick glimpse of the blasted window, set in the top of a sheer canyon wall that formed what must have been one edge of Uragan City. Above it was a windswept, dusty plain that presumably led back towards the spaceport, although the thick, stormy atmosphere limited his visibility too much to make anything out. Then the ramp hissed shut, bringing him and Muradov fully up into the Jonah’s hold.

  +Repressurising with oxygen,+ Jenna said as she operated the controls, her voice reaching his ears through the remnants of Uragan’s atmosphere as a weird, muffled counterpoint to her words coming through h
is comm. Drift could hear the whine of the fans even above the Jonah’s engines, towards which Kuai had already disappeared, and the yellowish haze that had drifted in was starting to thin. The slicer seemed … different, somehow. More confident, perhaps.

  ‘Why didn’t you contact us earlier?’ he asked. ‘We were about out of hope down there.’

  +Moutinho thought we were grounded and trapped,+ Jenna replied, +we didn’t know if he’d turn around and blow us out of the sky if he realised we were following him, so we kept quiet. He’d already said they were going to try to contact their crew, so we figured that you might be in the same place and just tailed him, hoping they were too busy flying to notice us.+ She shrugged. +I guess it either worked, or they didn’t care after all.+

  ‘Well, good thinking,’ Drift laughed. ‘For a moment I thought you’d done it to be all dramatic.’

  Jenna mock-saluted. +No, sir! Just trying not to die.+

  Drift snorted, and removed his rebreather as the light on the cargo bay control panel flashed green to indicate that the atmosphere was now safe to breathe. ‘Far too much of my life so far seems to have consisted of “trying not to die”.’

  ‘You’ve spent most of it flying around hard vacuum inside a tin can,’ Jenna commented dryly, following suit, ‘it shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise.’ She lowered her voice and nodded towards Muradov. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘That’s Alim Muradov,’ Drift replied, ‘former security chief of Uragan City.’

  ‘Oh. Um …’ Jenna’s eyes widened. ‘Why’s he here?’

  ‘It’s sort of a long story,’ Drift said wearily. ‘Can you just check in on the cockpit, please? I need to have a conversation here.’

  ‘The good sort or the bad sort?’ Jenna asked, running a hand through her hair and achieving precisely nothing.

  Drift grimaced. ‘I’ll let you know when I find out.’ He left her side and walked over to where Alim Muradov was sitting against the wall. The Uragan had apparently noticed them taking their masks off and had followed suit. The face thus exposed was wearing a dolorous expression once more.

  ‘So,’ Drift began, sitting down next to him, ‘you’re ex-military, right?’

  Muradov looked sideways at him. ‘It is that obvious?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Drift shrugged, ‘but I saw you take command in a stressful combat situation, and I also saw you shoot. Given Uragan doesn’t allow guns for civilians, you either spent a hell of a lot of time on the security force’s range or you did it for a living for a while.’

  ‘Red Star Army. Four tours of duty. Twelve years.’ Muradov’s voice was mechanical, as though reciting by rote.

  Drift nodded. ‘Why’d you join?’

  ‘Why are you interested, Captain?’ Muradov sighed.

  ‘You’re on my ship, and you’re armed,’ Drift pointed out. ‘Humour me.’

  ‘Very well.’ Muradov fiddled with the mask he’d just removed, holding it in his hands as though looking at someone’s face. ‘My father was a miner, as most are on Uragan. He died at the mine face when I was five. From that moment I saw mining not as the proud, working tradition of our planet but as a hazard. When the opportunity came to sign up for the defence force at sixteen, I did so immediately.’

  ‘And you were good enough to get bumped to the military,’ Drift nodded.

  ‘As you say,’ Muradov confirmed. ‘I showed a natural eye for tactics, for understanding combat. I began active service at eighteen. I won regimental marksmanship awards. I became my squad’s official sharpshooter. And after five years, I was officially reassigned to a sniper unit.’

  Drift whistled, appreciatively.

  ‘It was merely a combination of a steady hand, good eyesight and great patience,’ Muradov shrugged. ‘There are other professions for which those attributes would be suited, and I grew tired of killing. At first I had told myself I was protecting my planet, but I saw that I was not, for no enemy came near Uragan and I was stationed far from here. Then I told myself that I was protecting my government’s people, but I saw that I was not, for often we were sent to combat zones on contested worlds, or even worlds already claimed by others. Then I told myself I was at least earning money to aid my mother, who had fallen ill shortly after my father’s death and had never been able to work properly again. My childhood was hard, even by Uragan’s standards, but she deprived herself further to ease the impact on me. I swore that I would find a well-paid job to ensure she did not want again and that, at least, I managed.

  ‘Then she died when I was twenty-nine, and I found that I had no further reasons to kill people for money. I comfort myself somewhat with the knowledge that someone would have been sent to do what I did anyway, and the fact that I did it efficiently meant that my comrades suffered less in combat.’

  ‘So you came back to Uragan and joined the security force again?’ Drift surmised.

  ‘Indeed,’ Muradov nodded. ‘I was honoured in a small way by the military upon my departure, for the services I had performed. I was initially assigned to train our forces in weaponry, but I was not content merely to create inferior copies of myself. I wished to do something more, to make a difference, and I turned my energies to it. I was promoted upwards and sideways, learning more about the civilian side of the job as I went – crime detection, investigative procedures and such. I left my instructional role and eventually became security chief, perhaps partially aided by Abram Drugov’s desire to have a military hero in charge.’ The final words were flavoured with bitterness.

  ‘And now?’ Drift deliberately kept his tone neutral.

  ‘Now … I do not know,’ Muradov conceded. ‘I have failed. I did not see the threat to my city, or I misjudged its scale. A revolution was plotted under my nose, and I heard nothing but whispers until it was too late. My response was inadequate, and my officers either died or were forced to change sides in fear of their lives … or I had simply recruited the wrong people in the first place, people without the necessary loyalty to my government. And now I have killed the man I should have protected above all others, because it seems I also lacked that loyalty when my government ordered the death of two million of their own people.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like that was a government that deserved much loyalty,’ Drift offered.

  ‘Do not try to convince me that the United States of North America rules its worlds with smiles and honey cakes,’ Muradov snorted.

  ‘I know full well that they don’t,’ Drift replied easily. ‘The way I see it, all governments are just a different flavour of bastard.’ I know for sure that the Europans aren’t saints, given what they employed me for. ‘That’s why I have nothing to do with them, if I can help it.’

  ‘That does not sound like such a bad idea,’ Muradov admitted wearily, leaning his head back against the cargo bay wall and closing his eyes.

  Careful, Ichabod. ‘How do you fancy giving it a try?’

  Muradov’s eyes opened again and he turned his face towards Drift, his expression guarded. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Drift took the plunge. ‘I have a vacancy on my crew. Have had for a couple of months now, ever since a guy named Micah bought the wrong end of a stardisc when we got mixed up in something rather unpleasant. It’s left us a bit light, especially in the fighting department. My business partner Tamara has all sorts of useful skills, and you can imagine that Apirana’s no slouch in a fist fight, but sometimes you need someone with a different mindset. Someone who sees things strategically.’

  ‘Let me get this clear,’ Muradov said slowly. ‘You are offering me … a job?’

  ‘Yes,’ Drift replied simply. ‘You’re smart, adaptable, calm under pressure and one of the best shots I’ve seen. You’ve got a strategic brain and, most importantly, you don’t want to fight but you will when you have to. None of us here want to fight. But sometimes we have to, to protect what’s ours.’

  ‘So tell me, Captain,’ Muradov said, ‘what is it that you really do?’

  Drift became a
ware again that the Uragan had a gun at his side, but he’d come this far and honesty was the only real policy. ‘Whatever we need to, in order to get by. Within reason, I mean. We work transport jobs. Not all of them are legal, I’ll be straight with you, but we never traffic people other than consenting passengers. Goods, yes.’

  ‘Guns?’ Muradov asked, and Drift had a sudden mental image of ice cracking under his feet.

  ‘We have done,’ he admitted, ‘but I swear to you, not on your world.’

  ‘Oddly, I find myself believing you, Captain,’ Muradov said after a moment. ‘Continue.’

  That would have been the sticking point, I’m sure of it. ‘Sometimes we’ve done bounty-hunter work,’ Drift continued, his confidence in his pitch growing. ‘I like to keep within the law when I can: not because of any moral conviction, really, it’s just easier. But sometimes a legal job is hard to find, and sometimes something’s falling apart in the engine room and the only way you can make enough to get a replacement in time is to take a black-market job that pays well.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Muradov asked quietly.

  Okay, there was one more potential sticking point. ‘You’d find this out anyway, so I may as well tell you now,’ Drift said seriously. ‘Years ago, and I mean over a decade ago, I was a pirate. Quite a notorious pirate. Well, I guess I was technically a privateer: I was hired by the Europan government to hit specific shipping targets when they couldn’t risk the political fallout of sending their military after them.’

  ‘You mean you were hired by a government to kill people?’

  ‘Mainly just to take their stuff.’

  ‘Then you were better than me,’ Muradov grunted.

  Drift tried not to look too guilty. The story about killing his own crew could wait until they had a little more time.

  Muradov sighed, apparently not noticing Drift’s moment of awkwardness. ‘I have always prided myself on being a pragmatic man. I have no loyalty towards governments not my own, so I do not object to breaking their laws. I now have no loyalty to my own government either, as I have seen first-hand what they will do to protect their material wealth. I will be labelled a traitor by New Samara should they learn that I killed Abram Drugov, and I have already been labelled a traitor by the revolutionaries on Uragan. I am a man without a home.’ He looked Drift square in the face, his dark gaze direct and open.