“Aye. See Wilmott, and he was quite open with me at dinner last night, thinking I’m of like mind, you see, isn’t satisfied with the way things go on Keldworth Heath. He’s one of the largest shareholders, but hasn’t a large enough block — or those like-minded enough to vote with him — to see his will done on every issue, and that irks him to no end.”
“I see.”
Keldworth Heath was a new colony, with the first-generation settlers still in charge, and, like so many, wished little to do with the kingdom at large other than trade. They’d refused all Crown Services, and settled with the demand they be left alone to do as they will — which the New London Crown would honor, so long as they left neighboring systems alone and allowed their people to freely emigrate as they wished. Barring those two things, the owners of the world could do as they willed, including fighting amongst themselves over who ruled the planet and how.
It was a not uncommon occurrence, with the colonists who’d thought they were of like-enough mind with their neighbors to purchase and settle their own world together, suddenly discovering that the fellow next door was prone to the rankest heresies and intolerable differences.
People, it seems, quite like to hate each other.
“So,” Dansby went on, “he began to suspect I was not quite onboard with his plan and had my tablet taken while I spent the night thinking on his offer of another commission.” He frowned. “Why ever do his sort think treating a fellow poorly will make him more likely to come around? Never mind. In any case, I managed to escape, but they found out and chased me.”
“Being found out’s unlike you, Jon.”
“Yes, well, the note might have had something to do with that.”
“You left them a note?”
“Seemed the humane thing to do.”
“Jon,” Kaycie said warily, “what did the note say?”
“Only that it would be best if Wilmott were to evacuate his compound this morning.”
Dansby saw the chronometer tick over and tightened his grip on the boat’s controls.
“Why would he —”
The boat’s viewscreen flashed white before automatically darkening to adjust to the view outside, then brightened as the initial flash faded.
Off in the distance, some five kilometers away, a massive column of smoke rose from the ground before roiling into a bulbous top as it interacted with higher atmosphere.
The boat shuddered and jerked about as the shockwave hit, but stayed under Dansby’s control to ride it out.
The town below was less lucky.
They were far enough from the blast to survive it, but the buildings facing Wilmott’s compound were knocked over and their parts scattered like kindling. Those next were flattened, and those following that were left to lean precariously.
Dansby grunted and began lifting for orbit.
“Because he doesn’t have a shipload of mining charges anymore.”
Two
“No, I don’t believe it was an overreaction at all,” Dansby said as they reached orbit and he plotted a course for Elizabeth. Kaycie’d sat in shocked silence for a few minutes after the blast had gone off, which gave him time to set the boat’s course and relax, then she’d set on him like a terrier after a rat. “Look, Kaycie, you didn’t have dinner with the man. Wilmott sat there over the pudding and laid out exactly his plans for anyone on Keldworth Heath who might oppose him, and they were not pleasant to hear — over pudding or otherwise. He’s filled both his compound and that town there with the roughest sort of indentures and promised them both land and freedom if they’ll fight in his little civil war. If you think any of them were innocents, you’d be mistaken. These were not nice men.”
Kaycie mumbled something under her breath.
They were nearing the ship and Dansby set the boat to dock, easing it up beneath Elizabeth to nestle beside the keel.
“What was that?” he asked, unbuckling.
Kaycie followed him out of the cockpit. He undogged the hatch in the boat’s upper bulkhead and she pulled the retractable ladder down.
“No, honestly,” he said, “I didn’t hear you.”
Kaycie’s face went red and she looked down at the deck.
“I told you so,” she murmured, then glared at him. “Look, I swore when I spent a dreadful summer listening to Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Jacob that I’d never become the sort who said, ‘I told you so,’ but, damn it, Jon, you can’t ignore what I warn you about and then complain over that very thing! ‘Not nice men?’ Bloody hell, man, who did you think was involved in smuggling? Cloistered monks?”
“Those fellows on Saint Gummarus were quite happy to see their wines off without the tariff, if you’ll recall —”
“Jon!”
Dansby’s shoulders slumped. In general, Kaycie was right and he couldn’t argue her point. Perhaps if he’d stuck with cargoes of wine or some other innocuous goods, then they’d not have met the likes of Wilmott, but the pay had been so much better. Elizabeth had a decent carrying capacity, but he didn’t have the funds to fill her hold himself, and the major lines, the bloody Marchants prime among them, got nearly all of the strictly legitimate carrying contracts.
It was either sit idle until someone with a cargo grew desperate enough to ship in an independent hull or take on a bit of less than legitimate work.
“We needed the money,” Dansby said, starting up the ladder. “To pay the crew, to supply Elizabeth, to —”
He climbed into the ship’s lock, that bit where the antigrav from neither the boat nor Elizabeth properly reached and was nearly zero-g, save for a bit of stomach tumbling. At least he blamed the stomach tumbling on the conflict between grav systems.
“To search,” he finished lamely, hand on the final hatch to the ship.
Damn it, Kaycie knew where the money went, as she did the ship’s books. What he could spare, which was little enough after the costs of keeping Elizabeth crewed and supplied and in space, went to searchers. Trolling for information about his mother, put aboard some indenture ship and then her debt sold to a colonist on one of a thousand or more worlds. Such a search didn’t come cheap.
Kaycie tugged at his leg then eeled her way up to lay one hand over his on the hatch release and the other on his cheek. There was barely enough space for the two of them in the tubular lock, meant for spacers one at a time and not cargo.
“I know, Jon,” she said, wrapping her arms around him, “and you’ll find her. But when you do, must you not be her son? And not some stranger who’s done …” She pressed her cheek to his chest. “She’d wish to be rescued by Jon Bartlett, and not welcome his replacement by Avrel Dansby, I think.”
“I have —”
“Shush. Only hold a bit of yourself that’s still my Jon, will you? For the future, when we’re done with all this and can rest?”
Dansby nodded.
“All right, then.”
The hatch above them slid open, undogged from the ship side, and faces filled it.
“All well, sir, is there —”
The voice of Elizabeth’s bosun, Sheila Detheridge, broke off at the sight of him and Kaycie pressed together in the lock.
“Er … a bit more time and privacy, sir?”
“No,” Dansby said, trying to find some way for either himself or Kaycie to finish the climb into the ship without this bit passing that bit and turning even more embarrassing in front of the crew. “Break orbit and make for the L1 point, instanter. Before we start hearing from Keldworth Heath’s authorities, I think.”
“Oh, they’re squawking a’ready, sir,” Detheridge said. “Do you want to stay?”
“Up you go, captain — first on, first off,” Kaycie said, giving him a shove up the ladder, which ended his dilemma, if not his embarrassment, as she saw fit to give little surreptitious kisses and — ouch — a nip or two, to the bits that passed her on his way.
At least that seemed to say she’d forgiven him for blowing up their client and had plans for later,
which Dansby was quite on board with.
This hatch let into Elizabeth’s hold, the boat docking alongside the keel, and he had to frown at how empty the space was. Not a bit of cargo left, only stores, and they’d have to replenish those — not here at Keldworth Heath as he’d planned, either. He reached down to give Kaycie a hand up through the hatch.
“No,” Dansby said, answering Detheridge’s earlier question. “Prepare to make way — I’ll speak to whoever’s calling on our way to the Lagrangian Point.”
“Aye, sir.”
“What the bloody hell happened, Topaze, we can’t reach Holder Wilmott and Port Wilmott claims they were nuked from orbit! Now your boat was the only one near, so I’ll have an explanation!”
The ship’s chandler in Landing, the main, proper spaceport on Keldworth Heath, was a bit unhappy.
“Wall, now,” Dansby said, trying to keep the accent and persona that went along with this one of Elizabeth’s numerous false names. “Ah don’ rahtly know the whole of it, sir.”
“You were there!”
“Sir, Ah was chartered t’bring Mister Wilmott those crates an’ mah Topaze brought that man his crates, sir. Then that Mister Wilmott opens them crates, sir, an’ what does Ah see, sir, but nuclahr mining charges, sir, an your Mister Wilmott — your Mister Wilmott, sir, an’ none o’ mine — well, he starts to fondle them charges, sir, in ways a man oughtn’t touch a thing he’s not made proper promises to, if yah take my meaning, sir. An’ Ah says t’meself, Ah says, ‘Tobias Rigg, that there ain’t no brandy,’ as the proper bill o’ lading says it were t’be, sir, an Ah says t’meself after, Ah says, ‘That bloody Mister Wilmott —’ your Mister Wilmott, sir, an’ none o mine, ‘— well, he’s a’goin’ t’blow his fool self off Keldworth Heath if he ain’t careful!’ An’ so Ah says to meself, Ah says, ‘Tobias Rigg, y’get yerself an yer boat away from this fool afore he does!’ An’ so Ah did an’ so he done, sir! Just as Ah said, sir!”
“Topaze! Captain Rigg! You remain in orbit, you! You’ve just admitted to smuggling and —”
“No, sir!” Dansby pointed a finger at the signals console pickup so it would nearly fill the other man’s screen and shook it back and forth. “No, sir, not at all, sir! Ah shipped crates o’ brandy what had seals an’ bills o’ lading an’ all proper papers, sir! It’s Mister Wilmott — your Mister Wilmott, sir — who’s t’ hear such talk, sir! Endangering mah crew, sir! Ah’ve wee lads aboard, sir! An’ womenfolk, sir! An’ your planet’s all bringin’ in such things as’re so like to blow em up, sir! Whatever for, sir? Ah ask you, sir, whatever for?”
“You’ll be banned from Keldworth Heath, Captain Rigg!”
“Ah’ll report y’to the merchant’s guild, sir!”
“Smuggler!”
“Falsifier!”
Dansby tapped the console to shut down the connection.
“Kaycie, make a note that Topaze and Captain Rigg are no longer welcome on Keldworth Heath, will you?”
“Aye, sir.” Kaycie stood at the navigation console, a wide, flat oval some two meters across at the center of Elizabeth’s quarterdeck. “Were you planning on coming back one day?”
“One never knows,” Dansby said, “but best to keep track, just in case.”
“True.”
Dansby joined her at the navigation plot, giving the signals console back to the spacer who normally manned it.
Elizabeth was just coming around Keldworth Heath’s bulk and lined up to break orbit and make for the L1 Lagrangian Point, between Keldworth Heath and its moon, where they could transition to darkspace and be done with this bloody system.
“‘Wee lads?’” Kaycie asked.
“Well, we’ve Smithey aboard — he’s only sixteen, if he remembers right.”
“He’s nearly two meters tall — more now, I think, as the man’s growing every day.”
“Still —”
“And ‘womenfolk’?”
Dansby cleared his throat. “It’s a Fringe world — they have odd thoughts about such things.”
Kaycie raised an eyebrow.
“It’s a persona, Kaycie. While Captain Rigg might think it a thing to mention, it doesn’t mean that I do. You and Detheridge and even bloody Presgraves are —” Dansby frowned. “Where is Presgraves, anyway? I haven’t seen her since we came back aboard.”
Kaycie sighed. “Locked up. Sween had to knock her out and drag her to the hold.”
“What? Why?”
Dansby wasn’t entirely surprised, Presgraves was a frequent visitor to a small, locking room in the hold and when that was necessary it was best that it was her … well, whatever Culloden Sween was to her, be the one to get her there. He’d pay for it with bruises and perhaps a tooth when she woke, but later swear the making up was worth the price.
“You blew up a planet without her,” Kaycie said.
Dansby winced. Presgraves and her bloody love of explosions. If he’d known what he’d wind up doing, he’d have brought her with, if only to avoid the consequences of leaving her out.
“I see … I suppose I’ll have to find something else to let her blow up in compensation.”
“Hard to top a planet.”
“Milhouse?” Dansby called to the spacer on the tactical console.
“Aye, sir?”
“Be sure to record some readings of Keldworth Heath as we leave, will you, so I can prove to Presgraves that I didn’t blow up the whole bloody planet?”
“Aye, sir.” Milhouse began tapping at his console. “Crazy bint won’t believe it,” he muttered.
Dansby sighed. She likely wouldn’t and he wasn’t at all certain she wouldn’t try to blow up the next place they made planetfall just to spite him.
“I’ll be in my cabin until we transition,” he announced. He raised an eyebrow at Kaycie. “Care to join me to, ah, discuss the state of our stores and, um, resupply?”
“Oh, yes,” Kaycie said, wrapping an arm around his waist and steering him toward the hatch.
“Going to discuss stores and resupply with the captain!” she called loudly as the hatch opened. “For near three hours’ time, if he knows what’s good for him! Talking about supplies and where to put them in the hold, us! Important ship’s business, lads!”
Dansby thought they’d have rather got the point without her grabbing his bum.
Three
Harold Carlton’s shop looked as though it had been in place on Penduli Station for a hundred years, despite the station itself only having been there for thirty and still under construction.
There was no counter or much of anything for the public to browse, nor any sort of organization to the stock if they were inclined to do so, only shelf after shelf of parts for ships and ships’ systems, with no discernible organization. Carpenters’ printers sat next to half-disassembled tactical consoles, neither from the same type of ship, and beef production vat controls sat next to a jumble of different sized pulleys, all with no labels or even prices.
A thick layer of dust covered everything, shelves, parts, and deck, save a trail from the main hatch back through the maze of parts to Carlton’s desk.
Dansby made his way there and flung himself into the chair across from the skinny young man who might, if Dansby played this right, have a bit of a job for him and Elizabeth.
“You really should rearrange the stock from time to time, Carlton,” Dansby said, “so it at least looks like you do a bit of trade.”
Carlton scowled at him. “Too much work and no one cares, so long as the rent and taxes are paid. Neither of which you’ve helped with.”
“Nonsense,” Dansby said. “We both made a tidy bit off that last run.”
Carlton looked at Dansby as though he were mad. “The client — who had the potential to be quite a lucrative one with repeat business, I might add — is dead.”
Dansby looked away. “Well, yes, there is that.” He turned back once his grin felt steady enough. “So, what do you have for us next?”
Carlton snort
ed. “Not a thing, Dansby, not a thing.”
“Come now, Carlton, that’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?”
“You shot the client’s men, you stole one of the client’s best horses, you nuked the client’s compound, and him, with the very cargo he’d hired you to bring him … now no one trusts you.”
“His men shot the damned horse out from under me! And Keldworth Heath’s a pissant little world. Word can’t have spread so fast.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“Well, yes, there is that — but you never really did in the first place, so all’s the same, yes?”
Carlton shook his head. “I can’t get a reputation for my clients getting blown up. You’re going to have to find some other fool to fix jobs for you.”
Dansby took a deep breath. He didn’t like being at anyone’s mercy, much less a weaselly little broker like Carlton, but he did need the money. Elizabeth had barely enough in her accounts to pay the crew and resupply after he’d made the last payment to the agents searching for his mother, and there were already messages catching up with him asking for more funds to expand the search farther into the Fringe Worlds. He needed a job, and quickly.
“Look,” he said, “you weren’t there to hear what that man had planned for Keldworth Heath once he took over, but he explained it to me — in great detail, over the bloody pudding at dinner. I tell you, Carlton, Wilmott was not a nice man.”
The fixer’s brow furrowed. “Not a nice man?” He shook his head. “Dansby, have you ever considered that you’ve chosen not quite the correct line of work for your temperament?”
“I’m not asking for a bloody saint of a client, Carlton, but a man who doesn’t plan genocide over a plate of spotted dick isn’t so very much to ask for, is it?” He sighed. “Look, I need the money.”
“Wilmott paid well, for all he’s in bits now, didn’t he? Have you spent it all? You’re a profligate, Dansby. What do you spend it all on?”
“I —”
“Never mind. Look here —” Carlton raised his left hand, fingers cocked as though gripping a ball. “There are ‘nice’ jobs that come my way —” He raised his right hand, fingers cocked the same. “— and there are profitable jobs that come my way. Now, these things do, on occasion, come along inside each other’s orbits —” He swung his right hand in a wide arc that passed his left then hurried away. “— but it’s more of a cometary sort of thing, if you understand me.”
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