Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Box Set

by J. A. Sutherland

  “Solid records?” Jon asked. “You can do that?”

  “Solid as rock, Mister Bartlett.” Eades smiled again, as though at some secret joke he found most amusing. “Solid as though Her Majesty Herself had stamped them for you.”

  “And in return?”

  “You tell me what you learn. Simple as that.” Eades held out his hand. “A bargain, sir?”

  Jon eyed the hand for a moment. It was a deal with the devil himself, he suspected, but Eades was likely his only chance. No one else had responded to the message — it was as though no one had even seen it after Eades replied. Was vengeance worth it?

  More than sup with the devil, I’d bend over for Lucifer himself if it would harm the Marchants.

  He took Eades’ hand.

  “I expect it’ll be neither simple nor a bargain, Mister Eades, but it is a deal.”

  Jon clenched his jaw and resisted the urges that were running through him.

  This section of the Greater Sibward quay had been his family’s docks, he’d grown up running through them, dodging crates and men as they loaded and unloaded ships. The logo of Bartlett Shipping had graced a dozen docking hatches here.

  Now it was all Marchant.

  “Watch yerself!” a stevedore yelled and Jon skipped aside to allow the man’s load to pass.

  The move put him next to one of the docks, its hatch screen bright with the Marchant logo. Jon stared at it for a moment, thinking about all he’d lost. His father, his mother, every member of his family scattered to far systems, and everything they’d worked for, five generations of Bartletts … gone. Gone to Marchant, the men who’d engineered his woes to begin with.

  It wasn’t right that they should win. It wasn’t right that they should profit.

  They needed to pay.

  He forced his fist to unclench so that he wouldn’t punch the screen before him. His father’s voice echoed in his mind.

  Patience.

  Know your enemy. Learn everything you can about him. His habits, his loves, his hatreds, and his desires — then use all that to crush him.

  He knew what Marchant loved. Their ships, their cargoes, the money that came from them.

  He’d learn as much as he could about the company, pass what he thought best on to Eades — perhaps the man was serious about harming Marchant as well, perhaps not. Either way he’d use Eades as well as he could.

  And when I know it all, I’ll crush them. Destroy them as they did us, father. I’ll see they pay.

  There was a recruiting table set up a few hatches down and another three docks after that. Some new Marchant ships, it seemed, had need of more hands, and that worked to Jon’s purpose. He approached the first table, struggling to keep a charming, friendly smile on his face and show none of his true feelings.

  “Looking for a berth?” the man behind the table asked.

  Jon nodded and scanned the woman’s rank tabs and then the docking information.

  Second mate on … the Elizabeth.

  A former Bartlett ship they’d taken with the rest of the company and not bothered to rename.

  The very ship my father named for mother.

  All of the Bartlett ships had been named for the wives and daughters of the family. A five-generation tradition, fouled by the Marchants.

  Jon clenched his jaw tightly, shook his head, and moved on. He couldn’t stand to sail on a former Bartlett ship, but, more importantly, it would be dangerous to do so. Marchant would have replaced the officers, but if Bartlett hands had stayed on they might recognize him.

  He made his way down the corridor until he found a recruiting table for a Marchant ship that hadn’t come from their takeover of Bartlett.

  A smiling woman greeted him. She nodded to the bag slung over his shoulder.

  “Between berths?” she asked. “Looking for another?”

  “I am,” Jon said, “if the bargain’s right.”

  The woman raised an eyebrow, as though unused to anyone suggesting there was a bargain to be made instead of simply accepting Marchant’s terms.

  “Ordinary spacer,” she said. “One and twelve the month. Two-year contract.”

  Jon nodded. “I’m rated Able,” he said, “and struck for master’s mate on my last ship.”

  The documents Eades had supplied would back that up.

  “You look young for Able.”

  The woman looked at him oddly and Jon realized he wasn’t behaving as a merchant spacer.

  Play the part, he told himself. Hide the hatred and play the part.

  He forced a grin and leaned down to rest his elbows on the table.

  “I’ve skills and more skills,” he said. “Perhaps if we’re not to be shipmates I could show you some of my others over a pint?”

  The woman looked him over and chuckled. “You’re a bit young for me, lad, and haven’t nearly the parts I prefer.”

  Jon straightened and gave her a sheepish look. “Sorry, then … but about a berth?”

  “Able’s two and seven, if the bosun approves you. You strike for master’s mate if there’s an opening, for we’ve none now.”

  “Fair enough.”

  The woman tapped on her tablet for a moment.

  “You’ve your ratings?” she asked. “And your name?”

  Jon nodded. He swiped his finger across his own tablet to send her his forged papers and ratings. He’d have to get used to the new name Eades had provided, as well.

  “Name’s Dansby,” he said. “Avrel Dansby.”

  Part Two

  Two

  Jon’s mother, Elizabeth, was in the kitchen overseeing the final details of the holiday dinner. He could smell the roasting turkey and spices even from two rooms away and debated, for a moment, sneaking in to weasel a bit of the bird, or perhaps an early slice of one of the pies.

  Instead he made his way towards his father’s study, where Edward was meeting with Uncle Wyatt.

  He raised the toy ship he held above his head as he moved — model, really, as it was the concept model for Bartlett Shipping’s latest flagship, Elizabeth, now being built at Greater Sibward’s orbital shipyard.

  Named for Jon’s mother, the massive, four-masted ship was one of the largest on the Fringe, rivaling even the Marchant Company’s huge merchantmen, and faster, for all its size. Much faster, if what Jon had heard was true.

  At the study door, he cradled the ship under his arm — careful with the rigging, since Uncle Wyatt had impressed upon him how delicate the strands of plastic representing the ship’s lines were — and reached up to key the latch.

  The study’s wood flooring was cold under his bare feet after the carpeted runner in the hallway, so Jon rose up on tiptoe and hurried to the thick rug around his father’s desk.

  “Why the delays?” his father asked.

  “You know why, Edward,” Uncle Wyatt said. “No matter the excuses the shipyard gives up.”

  “Hmph.”

  Jon reached up and set his ship carefully on the desktop and went around to his father’s side of the desk.

  “‘Hmph’ you may,” Wyatt said, “but we should have expected this.”

  “No company should have such power, nor wield it like this.”

  Jon stopped beside his father’s chair and held his arms up, which had the expected result of his being grasped and lifted up to rest in the broad lap that always welcomed him. He rested his face against his father’s chest and smelled the familiar, comforting scents of spices, woods, and other goods from far-flung planets, so different from the scent of thermoplastic that clung to his mother after her trips to the shipyards.

  “The Elizabeth’s a threat to them, and they know it. Her design’s faster than any they have and they don’t like that we have the patents and rights to that design.”

  Edward sighed. “I know. And it might go easier for us if we just sold them the design, as they’ve asked.”

  “I’ll speak well of you at the wake.” Wyatt snorted. “Elizabeth’d have you in the oven nex
t to the bird if you sold off her design like that.”

  “No doubt, but with the work stoppages and the Marchants buying up every bit of material we need, it’ll be a miracle does her design ever taste darkspace.”

  “But once it does …”

  “Aye,” Edward said, “once it does —”

  His father’s lap disappeared and Jon fell —

  “Up and out, Dansby, you lazy bugger!”

  Jon —

  No, Avrel Dansby, now, he reminded himself, even as his body crashed to the deck with a heavy thump and a sharp pain in his left wrist.

  “Up!” the quartermaster’s mate, Bridgeford, yelled, casting a heavy boot into Avrel’s thigh.

  “Aye! I’m up,” Avrel said, scrambling to his feet. He shook the pain out of his wrist, along with the that of the faded dream, and edged away from Bridgeford — not so far that the crowd of watching crewmen could call him shy, but far enough that he’d be able to dodge Bridgeford’s next kick or cuff, should it come. As well to keep from going for the man’s throat, for the sight of Bridgeford in his Marchant Company shipsuit filled him with a rage as great as the peace the dream had brought. He’d never know that peace again in truth — with his father dead, mother indentured on an unknown world, and Uncle Wyatt gone into self-imposed exile on colony world.

  Bridgeford scowled. “See that you are when the pipes sound next time.”

  He stalked away and Avrel wondered if the man would ever know just how close he’d come to having his head bashed against the bulkhead.

  Avrel turned his own scowl on his messmates, who’d let him sleep through the quartermaster’s call for all hands to make sail. Again.

  “My thanks, lads,” Avrel muttered to them as he smoothed the bedding on his bunk and folded it flush with the bulkhead above Sween’s.

  That worthy, the leader of their mess, at least in the eyes of the other members, Detheridge and Grubbs, grinned widely.

  “Och, an’ y’loooked so peaceful, y’did,” he said, eyes wide and innocent. “’Ad a smile on yer face like a wee bairn an’ we were loathe t’disturb ye, we were.”

  Avrel shrugged acceptance. He’d been sleeping heavier than he should, likely using it as an escape, he’d admit, and he couldn’t blame his messmates for growing tired of waking him.

  Pipes sounded over Minorca’s speakers again and Avrel hurriedly latched his bunk to the bulkhead. Bridgeford was bad enough, but if the lot of them weren’t out on the hull soon, the quartermaster himself would become involved, and none of them wanted to draw Hobler’s notice, much less his ire.

  “‘Urry along, then, keelman,” Sween prodded, making Avrel wince at the nickname. It was because of that bloody Eades he’d been saddled with it and he’d like a word or two with the man.

  He slid the storage on his bunk’s underside open and pulled out his vacsuit, then followed his mates as they rushed forward from the berthing deck to the sail locker at the ship’s bow, slipping inside just as Bridgeford was sliding it closed. Even before the sound of the latch fastening sounded, Avrel and his mates had the seals on their vacsuits open.

  The others in the sail locker already had their vacsuits on and watched the latecomers with open amusement.

  Avrel sealed his own vacsuit to the neck. They’d all filled their air tanks when last they came in from outside, but he still checked the gauges on the back of each of his messmates’ suits, as each of them checked his. The Dark was harsh and offered no mercy for the ill-prepared.

  “Yer set,” Sween muttered, as Avrel clapped a hand on Detheridge’s shoulder to confirm her gages and hoses were correct as well.

  The helmet was next, and Avrel could hear the quartermaster’s voice was already sounding over his vacsuit radio as he made those seals tight, just before Bridgeford triggered the pumps to put the sail locker in vacuum.

  “— last tack a’fore we transition, if we’re lucky.” Hobler chuckled, something he was more likely than not to do every time he spoke, no matter if he were calling for another round in some pub or yelling for some bloody lubber for moving up the mast with less alacrity than he felt appropriate. “Then it’s a hop to Penduli Station and a bit of rest, lads, so make it a lively evolution, will you?”

  Bridgeford shuffled through the crowd of spacers to the forward hatch, and the chorus of Ayes was cut off in a burst of static as he triggered the outer hatch. Darkspace radiation filled the now open locker, interfering with the electronics and killing their vacsuit radios.

  Avrel filed out of the locker with the others, feeling the familiar hitch in his stomach as he stepped from the artificial gravity of the locker onto Minorca’s hull.

  He spared a glance further forward, past the ship’s bowsprit, to the vast expanse of darkspace ahead of them. A black canvas, relieved only by the distant swirling of darkspace storms where the winds of dark energy picked up and made visible the dark matter that permeated everything here, like black foam picked from an ocean’s wavetops.

  There was little time for gawking at the view, though, as the crew rushed up the masts. Avrel clipped his own safety line to the mainmast and sprang upward with the others, floating alongside the thick pole of thermoplastic to the topsail booms, then pulling himself along that to his position.

  Minorca was taking in sail, so as to slow her speed and be more maneuverable as she neared Penduli.

  The azure glow of the charged sails sparked white as he grasped the thin metal mesh of the sails and pulled along with the other. They took in two reefs, hauling the metal in and wrapping it to the yard, then making it fast.

  All in silence, responding only to each other’s hand signals and those of the master’s mates below on the hull. It was hot, heavy work and his vacsuit stank of the sweat of hours and days doing the same. Avrel took a pause in the work to look out at darkspace again and wonder what his life would have been like if it’d continued on its course instead of being derailed by the Marchants.

  He jumped as something touched him and found Detheridge had scooted over on the yard far enough to touch her helmet to his.

  “Stop lallygagging, lad,” she said, “they’re callin’ us in.”

  Avrel glanced down to the hull and saw the rest of the crew was headed down the masts and making their way to the sail locker.

  “We’ll transition to normal-space soon,” Detheridge went on. “Then it’s leave on Penduli, so don’t dally!”

  Once Minorca was made fast to the station’s quayside and the docking and cargo tubes made fast, Captain Morell called for all hands to assemble on the berthing deck.

  Avrel shuffled into the crowd with the rest of the crew, near his messmates. Captain Morell and Minorca’s two mates, Carr and Turkington, were on a slightly raised platform at the aft end of the deck, just forward of the wardroom and the captain’s quarters aft of that.

  Morell stepped to the edge of the platform and began speaking as soon as the quartermaster indicted that everyone was in attendance.

  “Well, lads, I told you there’d be some changes once we made port at Penduli and we’re here,” Morell said, “so here’s what we’re doing.

  “First, Mister Carr’s off the ship for leave and we’ll be getting a new second mate.”

  There were some uneasy looks and mutters at that, for the second mate dealt most directly with the crew, through the quartermaster. Carr was a good man and well-liked. He brooked no excuses, as was the norm for the Marchant Company as a whole, but he never worked the crew beyond reason.

  Morell, as well, did not look pleased with the news he delivered, but went on.

  “His replacement is enroute, but we’re early, so you’ll have a few more days leave here than expected.” He hurried on as the crew perked up at that news. “And you’ll need it,” he said, instantly quelling the crew’s excitement. “We’ve no more short hauls and easy routes ahead of us. Once Carr’s replacement is aboard, we’ll be setting sail to Hso-Hsi for a load of silks.”

  There was a moment’s silence, th
en a cheer. Avrel looked around and most of the crew seemed to be expressing pleasure, if mixed with a bit of worry.

  Hso-Hsi was a long haul for any ship, but Minorca was smaller than those that normally made that journey. They’d be feeling cramped by the time they finished, no doubt, and it would be a long finish coming — more than six months, at least, even though Minorca was a fast ship. The cargo, though, artificed-silk, was valuable enough that the crew’s shares would be large.

  The Hissies had managed to perfect a closely-held method of getting their silkworms to ingest virtually anything and combine it with the silk. From practical to luxury applications, the silks were much in demand. There was even a rumor that they’d managed to get the worms to eat gallenium, but, if true, the Hissies were holding that product even more closely — such a product would make everything from vacsuits to the netting over a ship’s gunports more effective, and the value would be immense.

  The Penduli Station merchant quayside was a scene of self-organizing chaos.

  Spacers filed on and off the ships nestled up to the station and connected with docking tubes. Carters moved containers of freight and supplies to and from the warehouses of the station’s inner side, yelling and gesturing as some other got in their path. Vendors hawked their wares to those just coming off ships after weeks or months in the Dark — and amongst those were the younger hawkers, looking for someone to guide to the station’s more dubious establishments.

  Boys and girls rushed toward Minorca’s debarking crew. They called out the offerings of the places which would give them the best commissions for leading a spacer there, expertly reading the faces of the spacers for interest, then zeroing in on them.

  “Girls!” a boy called, rushing up to Sween and tugging at his hand.

  Another grasped Detheridge’s arm. “Come, lady! I’ll show you the best place — you’ll be happy. Broad shoulders, skin like bronze!”

  One of them stared at Avrel for a moment, then stepped forward, knocking another boy aside. “Ignore these others, sir,” he said. “Their houses have skinny girls, nothing but bones — put your eye out, they will.” He stopped in front of Avrel and drew a shape in the air. “You need girl like pear — much nicer. Sweet and juicy.”