“That’s our Keelman,” Sween called. “Every port they seem to know what he’s after!”
Detheridge laughed. “I heard what you like, Dansby?” she asked. “A girl with a bit of a keel to her?”
Avrel flushed.
Detheridge laughed again. “Broad shoulders, you say?” she asked the boy who’d approached her.
“Like an ox, miss,” he assured her.
“Well, then,” she said, with a wink to Avrel. “I’ll take that above the waist and you below, Dansby. Do have fun.” She followed her new guide off into the crowd.
Avrel flushed darker, for he knew his messmates would likely give him guff about this. It wasn’t his preference — and he’d prefer to keep those to himself, regardless — but there was only one person to blame.
He glared at the boy, who met his gaze confidently and with a cocky grin. Did he know the full of who he worked for? Likely not, only that he should approach a certain man from a certain ship and make a certain offer.
“All right, then,” he said, making sure all of the other Minorcas had moved on and weren’t close enough to overhear. “Take me to the bloody Pear.”
The boy led off and Avrel followed. They quickly left the quay Minorca had docked at and made their way around the station’s ring. The look of what they passed through changed from the clean, ordered chaos of the Marchant docks, where the whole section of quay was leased to the company and available to no other ships, to something seedier and more disreputable.
Everything from the dress of the crews and dockworkers to the grime on the decks and bulkheads became noticeably worse the farther they went, and Avrel began noting the hard looks and narrowed eyes as he passed.
Marchant was not a well-liked company in some circles, and he’d have changed from his ship’s jumpsuit with the distinctive logo if he’d known where the boy was leading him.
“Has your Pear no sense at all?” he hissed at the boy, but his question was met only with a shrug of indifference.
Of course, the boy turned inward midway through the worst of the quays Avrel had ever seen. Penduli was a large enough station that some parts fell naturally into disrepair. This was one such, near enough the Naval sector that it received some custom from the Navy’s spacers who were looking for entertainments outside what was offered in their enclave. Those visits brought with them the Navy’s Shore Patrol, and where the Patrol went, the Impressment Service was not far behind.
Merchants like the Marchant Company paid well to keep such things from the areas where their ships docked. For those merchantmen who couldn’t, well, there was the reason for the quay’s condition and low docking fees as well, wasn’t there?
Avrel eyed the corridor the boy was leading him down dubiously. What lights there were flickered here and there, and access panels hung open where they’d been sprung and left hanging. Gaps were visible within those, where some of the station’s own components had been taken, either for sale or for use on some long-left ship.
There was little signage about what sorts of establishments might be down that way, and what there was had been defaced with graffiti so often that the original words were all but unreadable — not that he’d trust the word of any signage in such a sector. The businesses here would be rather more mobile than signage could account for, and stubs of cut cables told the story of any digital signage that might have once been in place.
Avrel caught the odor as he drew near, and thought this section’s facilities must be in as poor repair as the signage, if the smells were any indication.
“Come on, then,” the boy called. “This way.”
Avrel took a deep breath to steel himself, immediately regretted that, and considered tearing his ship’s insignia off entirely.
Or telling the bloody Pear to take himself off to hell and be buggered by some demon.
The establishment they finally arrived at was much as Avrel expected it to be. Not, at least, the brothel he’d halfway feared, but a small, crowded pub of dubious origin.
Sandwiched between two other compartments, neither of which advertised what was inside and both with a hulking, narrow-eyed figure beside their hatches, was a narrow space. It appeared that those businesses to either side had commandeered some of the space, with haphazardly welded pieces of bulkhead making up the adjoining walls.
The space was even dimmer than the corridor and smelled worse — something Avrel wouldn’t have credited if he’d not smelled it himself. A bit of the corridor mixed with rancid grease and whatever the pub had on offer for eating — all of which put Avrel far off of that.
The boy moved through the crowd easily, but Avrel was larger and there always seemed to be an elbow or shoulder he couldn’t quite get around. Despite his care and muttered apologies, the shove and snarl of rage, when it came, was not unexpected.
“M’pint, y’ lubberly bastard!” a man yelled, spinning to confront him after Avrel brushed against his elbow.
Avrel sighed and looked the man over. The pub’s other patrons edged away, suddenly finding enough space to open a small circle around the pair. Long experience with such events made the crowd’s movement appear choreographed.
He sighed again after getting a good look at his antagonist. Half a head shorter than Avrel, but with shoulders appearing as wide as he was tall, the man was clearly spoiling for a fight.
Detheridge might like those shoulders, if not for the face.
The fight the man was spoiling for was certainly not his first, for his nose had the mashed look of one which had been broken countless times. One eye was hooded and the eyebrow slashed through with scars. The knuckles around the pint glass were also visibly scarred, even in the poor light — and the glass itself was nearly full, meaning there’d been little spilled, if any, by Avrel’s jostling. No, this was only an excuse to pummel a stranger.
Avrel wasn’t a stranger to this sort of thing, at least not since leaving Lesser Sibward. First there’d been finding his place aboard ships with the crews — there was always a bit of jostling involved in that, and one had to fight for one’s place. Or, at least, show a willingness to fight and not back down or be bullied. And if a fight was ordained, he’d quickly found, it was best finished quickly — no dancing about and certainly no fairness.
“I’ll be happy to buy you a new pint —” Avrel ventured.
“Ha! ‘’Appy to buy me a pint,’ he says.” The man drained his glass at one go and narrowed his eyes. He flexed his shoulders in that way some men do to show they’re preparing for some effort. “If yer happy t’buy a pint, lad, I’ll make y’ bloody ecstatic.”
He handed his glass to someone in the crowd, never taking his eyes from Avrel, and stepped toward him.
Avrel moved as the man was midstep, snatching a full glass from the crowd and stepping forward himself. He swung the glass at the man’s head while simultaneously driving his knee upward.
His target, concentrating on the glass and its contents being swung at his head, missed the knee and let out a pained grunt as it connected with his fork. He did manage to block Avrel’s swing, but not the flung glass, which broke against the side of his head.
The blow to his bollocks doubled him over and Avrel, as though running in place, was already bringing his other knee up to connect with the man’s face — helped along with a hand to the back of the head.
There was a squishy crunch as the oft-broke nose met its fate once more, and Avrel finished the move by driving his elbow into the side of the man’s head where the glass had struck.
He danced backward, leaving his opponent to collapse to the floor.
“Stay down,” Avrel said, as the man got his hands under him.
“You little bug —”
Avrel didn’t wait for him to finish. He stepped forward, swinging his heavy, metal-toed boot into the man’s ear, crushing and tearing cartilage and skin.
This time the man stayed down, but Avrel didn’t relax. Instead he stayed light on his feet, knowing that now would be th
e time for any friends the man had to come to his aid.
He relaxed a bit as the crowd, which had edged farther away from the fight, began murmuring and broke up to return to their tables and the bar. One stayed behind, though — the one the fallen man had handed his glass to.
This man eyed Avrel for a moment, then snorted. He set the empty glass next to the unconscious man’s head.
“Should’a took the pint, mate.”
Avrel relaxed a bit and looked for the boy, who was still farther back in the pub looking on with amusement.
“You coming, then?” the boy asked.
Avrel scanned the crowd and relaxed more. Whatever dislike they might have for a Marchant crewman, if not dissolved, had then been overlaid with caution.
He did wonder at the place, though. His meetings with Eades’ proxies — a half-dozen of them in as many systems since he’d signed aboard with Marchant — had all been in far nicer places than this one. It made him wonder what sort of low-life scum Eades had working for him on Penduli, that he chose such a place.
It was all the more perplexing, then, as he followed the boy to the rear of the pub, down an access corridor, dank from a leaking water pipe, into one of the pub’s storerooms — only to find the man himself.
“Ah, Mister Bartlett,” Eades said, smiling widely. “How good of you to come.”
The storage room was crowded with containers of pub supplies, stacked deck to deck in some cases, and a small desk to one side, almost as an afterthought.
Eades, smiling and unremarkable as ever, sat at the desk and gestured for Avrel to sit, though Eades had the only chair. Opposite the desk was only a pair of containers, too high for a proper chair and making an awkward seat.
Avrel narrowed his eyes. He’d not met with Eades, nor heard from him directly, since signing aboard with the Marchants on Greater Sibward. Always before it had been the man’s agents, taking his reports on whichever system Avrel’s ship arrived at — seemingly always aware of his coming, and greeting his arrival with that bloody code Eades found so very clever.
“About your bloody code phrase,” Avrel began, determined to address that first, so long as the man himself was here. He’d had enough of the looks.
“That will be all, Samarth,” Eades said. “Mister Bartlett will be quite able to find his way back on his own.”
The boy, Samarth, nodded and left, sliding the hatch shut behind him.
Eades raised his brow. “‘Code phrase’?”
“Yes, this bloody ‘pear’ business. Every port I come to, there’s some boy leading me away while he extols the virtues of some imaginary girl’s bottom.” He scowled. “I’ll thank you to choose something else, now I have you here.”
“But, Mister Bartlett, it’s so clever, given your name, is it not?”
“It’s bloody silly!”
Eades’ brow raised further. “And what quality or service would you rather my lads offer you? Something you’d rather your mates think your interest lies? Oh, I have it, we’ll use —”
“No!” Avrel cut him off hurriedly, suddenly horrified at the possibilities. “Now I think of it, ‘pear’ will do nicely. No need to change it. Not a bit.”
Eades smiled. “I thought as much.” He sat back in his chair and motioned for Avrel to sit again. “We may begin, then — tell me what Minorca’s been up to, Mister Bartlett.”
Avrel sighed. It did seem that Eades always got his way, usually by arranging things so that his target had no real choice in the matter. He perched himself on the stacked crates, finding them just ever so slightly off balance, so that, while they were a natural and not unreasonable place to sit, part of his attention would forever be on not toppling over.
Likely planned this way, as well.
He stood again, took the top crate off and set it aside, then sat on the one remaining. He was low to the ground and looking up at Eades like a child sent to the schoolmaster, but at least he could have his full wits about him.
Eades smiled again, as though pleased, and that made Avrel wonder that even in the unstacking he’d been manipulated again somehow.
Damn the man, but he makes one feel as a rat in his bloody maze.
“The seating is to your liking now, Mister Bartlett?”
Avrel cleared his throat. “Just get on with it, will you? And hadn’t you best not use my real name?”
“There’s no one here to hear, and Samarth is utterly loyal to me.” Eades’ smile fell. “As well, I wish to remind you, perhaps, of who you really are and what you’re about this.”
“Do you think I don’t?” Avrel felt his face flush with anger.
There was not a day, not an hour, aboard Minorca that he didn’t feel his hatred for the Marchant Company and what they’d done. It was all he could do sometimes to contain the urge to overload the ship’s fusion plant and send the bloody lot to hell. Only the knowledge that neither the crew nor even the officers were to blame for what the Company had done to his family kept him from it — that and the certainty that a single ship would be no loss to the Marchants.
No, he longed to hurt them, but far more than the loss of a single ship.
“There’s the spark,” Eades whispered. “There’s the glint in your eye.” He stood suddenly and pried open the lid of a nearby container. “Oh, what luck —”
He pulled out a bottle, looked around the storeroom for a moment, then removed a second, setting both on the desk, one before Avrel and one before himself.
He sat again, removed the bottle’s cap, and, with an absurd amount of delicacy for drinking from a bottle’s neck, took a sip.
“Do help yourself — I assure you the proprietor is well compensated. I see no glasses, but wouldn’t necessarily trust them here and, well, when in Rome, yes?” He took another drink and pursed his lips. “It’s quite fine — Irish, I’m afraid, but one can’t have everything.”
Avrel sighed and took up the bottle. He could almost wish it were one of Eades’ agents and not the man himself, now, as the agents, at least, had a more practical manner. They didn’t rush off on any tangent that might make them feel themselves clever. He took up the bottle, seeing that it was, indeed, a fine brand of whiskey, if Irish, as Eades said, and raised it to his lips.
“Minorca’s actions?” Eades prompted, just as the whiskey entered Avrel’s mouth. “That is why we’re here, after all.”
Avrel forced himself not to react. Jumping from tangent to the point and making the other fellow feel guilty for being on the path he’d just been led down was another of the man’s infuriating tactics. He held the drink in his mouth for a moment before swallowing, just to be certain Eades would know he wasn’t rushing.
“You have the reports from your agent on Bidfield, yes? Well, then, since leaving there …”
The recitation of the Marchant ship’s sails and trading since his last report took only a short time. There was little, in fact, of any import.
Minorca was a relatively small ship for the Marchants, and dedicated to shorter routes within New London space. She was not one of the truly massive ships the company used to ply darkspace to Hso-hsi and farther — which was why Avrel saved the news of their next destination for the last, filling Eades’ ear with the trivial details of a hold full of produce and raw materials before announcing his news.
“And now we’ve sold all that off here on Penduli and the captain’s announced our next destination —” He trailed off, anticipating Eades’ reaction when he went on.
“Hso-hsi, yes,” Eades said blandly, “but that’s of no import.”
Avrel blinked.
“You knew?”
Eades smiled. “I know most of what you report, dear boy. More than you report in nearly all cases, including this one. No, Minorca’s destination is not the crucial bit, though you might have thought so — the crucial bit is your ship’s journey.”
Avrel raised an eyebrow at that, but stayed silent. He’d learned well enough that Eades needed to let on how very clever he was.
The man would eventually get to his point, if left alone.
“From Penduli to Hso-hsi, your ship will be sailing through the Barbary. You’ll take on some unimportant cargo of manufactured goods here at Penduli — something those benighted worlds of the Barbary will find useful, I’m sure — but those will be disposed of early on.” His eyes narrowed. “What I want word of — and what you must get word of to me as quickly as it occurs, no matter the risk — is what cargo Minorca takes aboard next.”
“Next?”
“Well, perhaps not immediately, but there will be a cargo in the Barbary of interest to me. And when it’s taken aboard, you must inform one of my agents as quickly as possible.” Eades paused. “Even at risk of exposing yourself.”
“Now see here —”
“Mister Bartlett, do you wish to damage the Marchants? Hurt them as they’ve hurt you?”
“I do, but how does one cargo matter? Smuggling, even the worst of it, will be fobbed off on the captain, not the company. If I’m exposed, I’ll be put off the ship and my image and records put about — no amount of your magic name-changing will ever get me aboard another Marchant ship.”
Avrel glared at Eades. He’d thought the man more dedicated to harming the Marchants than this, which was why he’d helped him. Now it appeared Eades was nothing more than some petty policeman, on about a bit of smuggled goods. One cargo, even the worst Avrel could think of, would have no real impact on the Marchants. They’d simply blame Captain Morell and dismiss him.
“One cargo may be blamed on a captain, yes,” Eades said, “but there have been others. Each one is a pebble — the bits of a mountainside that tremble and clickety-clack down the slope in prelude to it all tumbling. I have a great many pebbles already and you, Mister Bartlett, with word of this cargo, will bring me the first great stone to set in motion.”
Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Box Set Page 6
