Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Box Set

by J. A. Sutherland

  So Dansby applied himself to his work, even out on the hull where he must satisfy himself with quick glances at Elizabeth instead of the long gazes he wished for.

  Something struck his back with a heavy thump, painful even through the material of his vacsuit.

  It came from Tart, the master’s mate, swinging a heavy starter to bring Dansby’s attention back to the task at hand, and Dansby had to leap to catch up with the others of his watch who were already scurrying across the hull to grasp lines in preparation for some maneuver the captain ordered.

  So much for applying himself and gaining trust enough to be allowed leave with his watch.

  Eight

  Tyche left Collingworth and sailed on with a very nearly despondent Dansby never having set foot off the ship.

  “Getcher head up, lad,” Kel told him. “You’ll never be off the Little Tyche ever again if’n they think yer sullen.”

  It was a make-and-mend day aboard the frigate, five days out of the system, and they’d made good time. Now they were on the port tack for a long, lazy run — Dansby’d heard they were in for three days of easy sailing with little need to call all hands. That had left Captain Stansfield free to call for a day of lazing about and working on personal projects.

  Kel was working on a bit of mending, trying to get a few months more from a ship’s jumpsuit before signing a purser’s chit for a new one. Jordan was laying back in his bunk, reading on his tablet, while Prat was off with some other souls for a dice game in the hold — or, no, Dansby saw, he was standing idly near the companionway down to the hold, it likely being his turn to keep watch for the bosun, master’s mates, or, Dark forfend, an officer stumbling onto that particular amusement.

  As for Dansby, he was sitting on his bunk’s edge, elbows on knees, looking, for all the world, like the sort of sullen, new-pressed sot who should never see the outside of Tyche’s hull in normal-space for fear he’d take a leap. And he knew it.

  The trouble, of course, was that he was sullen. Initially, on waking up aboard Tyche for the first time, he’d been angry, but he’d known enough not to voice it. There was nothing he could say to the ship’s officers that would convince them he’d been pressed wrongly, and trying would only make things worse. Then he’d come to think of it almost as a sort of adventure — one he could escape from when he wished. Dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of men ran from Navy ships and many were never seen by an officer again. Surely he’d be able to do so, make his way back to Elizabeth, and have a grand story to tell — maybe one day he’d dandle his and Kaycie’s grandchildren on his knee and tell them of the time he’d been so wrongly taken up by the Press and served aboard a Royal Navy frigate until he made some dashing escape.

  It would be a grand thing to have such tales for his grandbabies and better still if there were a pinch of truth to them. Just a pinch, mind you, as he’d come to determine that adventure was vastly overrated and likely made so by those whose adventures had only that very pinch of truth he desired.

  Then Kaycie’d brought Elizabeth to meet Tyche and his hopes had risen, unreasonably so, that her meeting with Stansfield would get him free.

  Once that happened, his acceptance of being stuck aboard ship for a time had evaporated.

  Now, with one port call of being kept aboard ship under his belt and Elizabeth nowhere in sight as they sailed on to the next, sullen was the least of what he felt.

  “Try a smile, lad,” Kel told him.

  Dansby looked up, met Kel’s gaze, and tried to pull the sagging muscles of his mouth into a grin. His face felt like it was made up of sopping wet towels, unable to form itself into anything but a sullen droop. He parted his lips to show teeth.

  “Sweet Dark, lad, no — don’t do that again.” Kel looked around to be sure no one had seen. “Maybe just stare at yer tablet and pretend to read, eh, that way’ll hide yer face, aye?”

  The next port, a mining station called Ravenstone, saw him allowed off the ship, but only as part of a boat crew set to loading supplies.

  This was a mining station and Naval resupply in a system with no habitable planets and, with no other ships in-system, the bosun thought there little chance of anyone running. The miners would offer no shelter to a pressed man, despite their own distaste for authority, because every bit of air and water aboard the station had to be paid for by someone. Thoughts to the freedom of others were all well and good until it hit their own pocketbooks.

  “Lively now, lads! Lively, I say!”

  The station chandler was in just as much of a hurry for them to finish the work and be on their way as the bosun appeared to be, setting them to pushing anti-grav carts with great coils of thermoplastic for Tyche’s carpentry printers through the hatch to the ship’s hold.

  Dansby gave a grunt and heaved his shoulder at the cart to maintain its momentum and direction as he lined up with the hatch. Coil and cart were sized to make it through, but only just, and woe betide the spacer who slammed a load into the coamings with the bosun and his mates watching close.

  The carts were low-slung things, hovering barely five centimeters off the floor, but heavily loaded to Dansby’s height and above.

  His load cleared and he grasped the handle to slow it, as there was a backup of others just inside the ship.

  “Dansby!” Tart yelled, coming around the cart ahead and waving a tablet. “Purser says that one’s to go aft!”

  “Aft?” That made little sense. Tyche’s carpenter was forward, and to place these stores aft would mean dragging them the length of the ship again when they were needed.

  “Are you deaf? Aft, I said!”

  “Is there a problem, Mister Tart?” a midshipman asked. The midshipman was ostensibly set to overseeing the loading, but it was the bosun and purser who were really in charge.

  “Only this —”

  “Aft it is!” Dansby said, setting his face in the smile Kel had told him was least likely to make people think his guts pained him.

  Dansby shrugged. He was paid, such as it was and eventually, to do as he was told, not that it mattered a whit to him when he’d be running as soon as he was able. Most important was to look cheery and resigned to his fate.

  He steered the cart around those waiting and headed aft through the hold, past the great vats and stacks of containers that made up the workings of a Queen’s ship.

  He was nearly to the midway point when he glanced back and frowned. There were five carts at the forward hatch now, all backed up and waiting while the carpenter, purser, and bosun argued about stowage. Their words drifted dimly down the length of the ship and it seemed the carpenter wanted the existing stores pulled out so as not to leave the oldest at the back and least accessible, while the purser argued for some method Dansby thought would best profit him, and the bosun threatened to have the crew dump their carts in both those worthies’ sleeping compartments and they could sort things out as they liked.

  All while Dansby pushed a lone cart aft.

  Thunk.

  “Belay that, y’bloody fool!”

  Both sound and call came from ahead, as well as the impact that stopped Dansby’s cart in its tracks.

  He peered around his cart to find a spacer, Harker, pushing a crate-laden cart forward along the same aisle.

  “Move aside,” Harker said.

  “There’s no room,” Dansby said.

  The aisle down the hold’s center was just wide enough for a loaded cart and no more, with only a few centimeters on either side. There were side aisles, wide enough for a man to walk, if he weren’t so broad, or to tuck an empty cart out of the way, but tilted on its side as the next was allowed to pass. Things generally went in or out of ship’s hold and when both were needed they’d use the hatches at either end, so as not to run carts into each other as they just had.

  Unfortunately, the station was so small they hadn’t the facility for that and Tyche had only the one open hatch.

  “Well, back it up, then,” Harker ordered.

  Dan
sby glanced behind him. The bottleneck at the hatch was worse, now, with a sixth cart, this one in the hatch itself, and likely more lined up to wait outside.

  “The way’s blocked,” Dansby said. “Can you back up to the aft hatch and slide your cart in while I unload?”

  “Pushed it this far,” Harker said, “I’m not backin’.”

  “Well, neither am I,” Dansby said, a bit of stubbornness taking hold, and he felt he had the right of it. Backing his cart up to the forward hatch would only make the problem there worse.

  “Look, you new-come, buggering, bastard, back yer load!”

  “You back yours!”

  “Why, you —”

  Harker gave his cart a great shove to thunk into Dansby’s. The spool of thermoplastic had quite a bit more mass than whatever was in the boxes, though, so there was little benefit to it.

  “‘Ere, now, what’s all this?”

  Dansby recognized the voice of Beardsley, the purser’s assistant, coming from behind Harker’s cart and tried to peer around his own load to spot the man.

  “This upstart pikey’s blockin’ the way,” Harker said.

  “Mister Beardsley,” Dansby called. “The forward hatch is blocked with loads while our betters work out the storage. There’s nowhere for me to back to. If we were to put Harker’s cart in the aft lock, then I could unload and we’d both be going in the same direction after.”

  He caught site of Beardsley’s eye in the space beside the carts, peering forward to see the blockage there.

  “He’s right, Harker, there’s no path there. Back her up.”

  “I’ll not. I’ve pushed the bloody thing this far and I’ll not do triple work — forward, aft, forward, make up yer bloody minds!”

  “Damn you, Harker, move the bloody cart back!”

  “Don’t answer ter you, ain’t but half a nip-cheese, an’ why’re we movin’ these crates off anyways? Says ‘scrap’ on ‘em and we should just dump ‘em out the lock, ‘stead o’ makin’ a man rupture hisself in the unloadin’!”

  “Harker, back the cart!”

  “Won’t!”

  Dansby could picture Harker, obstinate at the best of times and apparently now set on a path, crossing his arms and glaring at the assistant purser.

  “I’ll get the bosun, shall I?” Dansby asked. “Or Tart, he’s closer.”

  The master’s mate would settle Harker quick enough. The man might claim he needn’t take orders from the purser’s assistant, the man not being in the chain of command at all, but Tart’s starter would set him straight.

  “No!” Beardsley said quickly. There was a pause. “Dansby, get back here and help with this cart. Harker, my compliments to the midshipman of the watch, and I’ve finished with you aft.”

  “’Bout bloody time,” Harker muttered.

  Dansby slipped into a side space between two vats, one of nutrient solution and the other of beer, then rounded the beer vat aft. There was just enough room for a man to slide sideways between the vats and crates of stores between those and the ship’s hull. Midway around the vat’s bulge he met Harker coming forward.

  “Move yerself, new-come,” Harker said.

  “Really?” Dansby sighed, then slid back the way he’d come until he could wedge himself between two stacks of crates and let Harker pass.

  “Good luck to you with that bastard,” Harker said in passing. “Don’t listen to reason, him.”

  “Better luck to you with yourself,” Dansby said.

  “What?”

  But Harker was already past and the space too narrow for him to turn. Dansby slid back into his former path and rounded the beer vat to come out behind the two carts with the waiting Beardsley.

  “Will we be having trouble, then?” Beardsley asked.

  “What would you like moved?” Dansby asked with what he hoped as a willing grin. There’d be talk of this — Beardsley to purser and purser to the other warrants. He wanted all to hear that Avrel Dansby was a willing, cheerful worker, resigned to his place aboard Tyche and not a sullen sot likely to run.

  Think me a dull-brained drone and give me a watch’s leave to get Kaycie a message, then I’ll be gone before you can note the back of me.

  Beardsley flinched and Dansby eased his face a bit.

  “Er … well, then, this bit back, as you said.”

  Dansby looked the second cart over as he grasped the handle and leaned back to get the mass moving back toward Tyche’s aft stowage.

  The thermoplastic crates themselves were in good shape, but they were labeled as battle-damaged components — bits of consoles or hull and decking material that had been too shot up to be recycled aboard ship. Harker was right, most warships would dump those, either in darkspace, where they’d eventually be driven onto dark matter shoals and broken up to atoms, or tossed toward a system’s star in normal-space.

  There were some systems so poor they’d pay a few pence per pound for the lot, accepting what the laser-charred ends of thermoplastic would do to their own materials printers, or breaking down the system components by hand for the few chips and circuits that might be usable.

  This station didn’t seem one of those — it was a poor place, but not so destitute and desperate as that.

  The cart started moving, and once the mass was going things were easier. The nearly frictionless glide of the antigrav left him to only steer and not let it gain too much momentum, then throw his own weight against it, feet braced, to slow and stop it at the aft hatch.

  Beardsley had the hatch open for him and stood aside.

  “Easy, now,” he said.

  Easy? For a load of useless scrap?

  There was something odd about this, with Dansby’s load of coils coming aft when all the others were stored forward nearer Tyche’s carpenter and his printers, while a load of scrap a station couldn’t possibly want was being unloaded.

  Dansby gave Beardsley a quick look as he turned the cart to ease it into the hatch. The man looked exceedingly nervous for such a routine taking on of supplies and dumping of garbage.

  Odd and nervous added up to something, and knowing what something was could well work to Dansby’s advantage for his time aboard this ship.

  Having the devious, sneaky, rules-lax sort who assisted the purser in his debt — or even one such as would take on a purser’s warrant himself, for there was little chance Purser Fell wasn’t fully aware of whatever his assistant was up to — could only do him good, couldn’t it?

  Dansby edged the cart a bit to the left, driving the upper crates on that side into the hatch coaming. The cart shuddered and the whole load was pushed out of alignment, showing him the crates were not quite as heavy as they should be, if they were tightly packed with bits of hull and damaged systems.

  “Handsomely now!” Beardsley said. “Watch it!”

  Oh, I am. Quite — He gave the cart a bit more pressure to that side and one of the stacks began to topple. — closely.

  “Look out there!”

  “Oh, no!” Dansby cried.

  He reached out as though to steady the load, but instead gave the stack just enough more momentum to topple fully. The crate on the very top was small enough that he could grab at it, and while Beardsley’s attention was on the crash of the others against the decking, Dansby’s hands quickly undid the latches of the crate he held. He spun his back to Beardsley as though absorbing the crate’s mass and reached inside.

  “Easy! Easy!” Beardsley was grasping at the fallen crates, setting them upright and running hands over their edges.

  Dansby’s own hand encountered not the rough, crumbling edges of shot-charred hull material or the jagged edges of some system’s ruined circuit board, but a mass of foil packets the size of his palm.

  Convenient, that, he thought, palming one and sliding it into his jumpsuit pocket.

  The crate’s lid latched easily as he spun back to face Beardsley.

  “Here you go, saved one!”

  “You clumsy oaf!”

 
; “Well, now, Mister Beardsley, it’s not as though this scrap would get broke up more than it is, would it?” Dansby tried to keep his face blank and guileless.

  “It’s not —” Beardsley broke off and looked at Dansby’s crate. He ran his hands over the lid and latches, then seemed satisfied. “I’d not want a mess to clean up, you know how Captain Stansfield is about his decks.”

  “Oh, aye,” Dansby said. He set his crate on the cart and began reloading the others.

  “Wouldn’t want the bosun down here making a fuss at what we’re about, would we?”

  “No … I … Just you clean this mess up and stow those coils, then this scrap off into the station — there’s a man who’ll take it from there.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Privacy aboard any ship was hard to come by for the common crew, but more so aboard a warship.

  Tyche had four or five times the complement of a similarly sized merchantman, with more stores and guns than such a ship would carry.

  Less free time to need a place of privacy, as well, for the Navy’s primary thought for their crews — after keep the pay six months in arrears so they’ll not run and remind them every waking moment they shouldn’t have joined if they can’t take a joke — was that idle hands were the devil’s workshop.

  Tyche’s officers and warrants took that to heart with the crew as well as any of Her Majesty’s ships, and it was four days of off-and-on watches, haul the lines, shift the sails, scrub the decks, and, oh, yes, we’ve a spare moment here so let us work the guns, shall we, before Dansby had a moment to himself.

  The ship was through the system’s halo of dark matter and far enough away that the dark energy winds became variable instead of blowing directly toward the system’s center. Captain Stansfield said they were on an easy tack for their next destination with only minor sail changes expected, therefore some respite from the back-breaking effort of sailing and maintaining the ship was called in the form of another make-and-mend day.