Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Box Set

by J. A. Sutherland

  Which is not to say idleness at all, for the crew was expected to maintain their own gear and this was the time for it.

  All over Tyche’s mess and gundecks the crew spread out their things, patching jumpsuits, examining their vacsuit liners for wear, and, most closely, the vacsuits themselves — testing valves, coolant tubing, looking for thinning spots that might rip if caught by some bit of rigging while outside the hull.

  The ship had the busy murmur of a workshop, with everyone about their tasks, and only the occasional call for some needed tool or material ringing out. To trade a bit of valve lubricant for a patch of proper size, or a length of tubing for some ribbon that might fancy up a man’s shore-going jumpsuit and catch a girl’s eye.

  Dansby stood and stretched. His own gear was from the purser’s slop stores and there was little more to be done to make it either fancy or in better repair. He’d come aboard with nothing and signed the chit for nearly two month’s pay for the use, not ownership, of a basic kit from the purser’s slops until he could buy his own. For most spacers, that time would come never, for the full kit from vacsuit inward was far too dear for a common spacer to own outright. Nevertheless, they were responsible for its upkeep and would be docked for wear and tear when Tyche paid off.

  “You’re done?” Prat asked.

  “As much as can be done with gear in such a state,” Dansby answered.

  “Do you have a spare O2 sensor, by any chance?”

  Dansby shook his head. It was a silly question to ask, as that was an expensive part and no one would carry an extra on their own books — better to save the expense for when needed.

  Prat sighed. “Off to Purser Fell, me.”

  “I’m headed that way,” Dansby said. “I’ll pick one up for you.”

  “Thank you, mate.”

  “What are you off to the purser for?” Jordan asked.

  “A bit of this and that,” Dansby said, rising and leaving before more questions could be asked.

  In fact, he was headed toward the purser’s office, but past — into the hold itself for a bit of privacy. He had a fair idea of what the foil packet held, but wanted to be certain. There’d been no time or place yet for him to fully examine it, with Tyche beating away from Ravenstone for so many days. He’d not even taken it from his pocket, for fear someone would see and either report him to the bosun or, more likely, wish a piece for himself.

  The hold on a make-and-mend day lacked the full privacy he might like, but it was still early enough that most of the crew was still engaged in the real work of the day and hadn’t yet sought out illicit entertainments. Most, but not all, as Dansby could hear the sounds as he passed in the dim light and shadows of vats and crates.

  To port the sound of clacking against the deck, followed by groans told him of a dice game, while to starboard a different kind of groan spoke of a pair of spacers finding a different release from Tyche’s daily labors. At midships the central corridor was nearly blocked by stacks of crates, moved out from their place of storage to one side to clear a larger space. From the sounds there — cheers and the smack of fist on flesh — the undercard was underway and Tyche’s champion would be defending his position as toughest man aboard before the day was out.

  There was no sign of any of Tyche’s warrant officers or marines, much less the officers themselves. The tacit agreement was that so long as the place was put back to rights before the next watch, nothing was pilfered from the stores, and all were fit for duty when called, then authority would look the other way on such a day.

  Still, some things were not to be tolerated. The stores of spirits and beer were forward, nearest the purser’s office, and there’d be a marine there still — drunkenness was expressly prohibited, though some of those watching the fights or gaming at dice might have a bit of drink tucked away.

  More prohibited, and more harshly punished, would be possession of what Dansby thought he had tucked away in his pocket.

  He made his way farther from the sounds and ducked into a space between two vats of nutrient solution. The way was tight and he had to duck down into the lower, wider space their curved sides left. Those curves left a surprisingly empty space where four of the vats came together, so long as one didn’t mind crouching or sitting.

  He sat still for a time, listening and peering into the shadows around his position until he was satisfied there was no one else about, then reached for his pocket. The crinkle of the foil seemed unnaturally loud.

  Inside was what he’d expected, small pills, barely the size of a pinhead. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, and each worth a tidy bit of coin — or transport as a criminal indenture if caught with it on a Core world.

  Or worse.

  Both the Fringe worlds and the Navy were somewhat more … direct, in their punishments.

  Dansby recognized the stuff from a load Carlton had offered and he’d refused to take aboard Elizabeth. He could well imagine why it was in demand in Ravenstone, and not by the miners themselves. Addle, as it was called, didn’t offer them the feeling they’d wish to escape the drudgery of the mines — instead it dulled the senses and fixed the mind, obsessively so, on repetitive tasks. On addle, a man might work sixteen or twenty hours at hard labor, until he fell into bed too exhausted to think of anything else. One of these pills with a hearty breakfast and he’d be back at it, never thinking to complain.

  No wonder Tyche had offered the crew no leave there — with so much addle offloaded, the full complement of miners must all be on it, and the place could save both money and aired space by providing them with virtually no entertainments at all. With a daily dose of addle, they’d have neither the sense nor energy to complain.

  This was the sort of thing the Navy was supposed to prevent, what with their customs ships and revenue cutters. Use of addle was one of the few things the Crown inserted into a colony’s charter as a prohibition — the excuse being that a person given addle would never have the volition to exercise their right of emigration, becoming virtual slaves.

  Dansby wondered how far up in Tyche this particular rot went. The assistant purser, for a certainty, but what about the purser himself? One or two of the master’s mates might be aware, but what about the bosun? Any of the officers? Certainly Captain Stansfield couldn’t be. Dansby had little sense of the man, but surely he wouldn’t risk his freedom and reputation for a bit of coin.

  He thought about the full cart of “scrap” and how full the crate … how openly full the crate he’d pulled this packet out of had been. There’d been no real effort to disguise the contents once the lid was off — not even a token sprinkling of real scrap over the contents to deceive a casual look.

  That spoke to confidence — or complacency. Whoever’d packed those crates had been quite certain that no one, either aboard Tyche or the station, would take a look, and that spoke to someone being able to ensure such a thing.

  Dansby made to repocket the addle, then thought better of it and wiped it carefully with his jumpsuit before tucking it away, high up between the vats, giving it a bit of a flick so that it was well back from the edge. This was not a thing he wanted to be either found or associated with him.

  He eased his way out from between the vats, then peered out to the main corridor running the length of the ship. The sounds of others going about their entertainments still echoed dimly, but there was no one to see where he’d been, so he stepped out and began making his way aft to the ladders up.

  Passing the area where the crates of addle had been stored, he paused.

  Tyche had stops at many ports — and more than one of them was a mining outpost, much like Ravenstone. There were new-settled worlds, too, and addle would work just as well on an indentured farmhand as it would on a miner. Keep the man complacent and dull, without the energy or will to object to the work or conditions.

  Dansby checked fore and aft again to ensure he was unobserved, then slipped into the side space full of stacked crates to either side.

  The cra
tes weren’t labeled here — this was more miscellaneous storage for the purser and his assistants. No one from the crew would be sent to retrieve something unattended. This would be where Fell, and his mates if he allowed them, would carry their own cargoes. A bit of better food or drink they could sell to the crew on the side, small luxuries and bits that weren’t officially part of the ship’s offerings, or even a bit of something to trade between Tyche’s stops, though even the most liberal interpretation of those unwritten rules of how a purser might profit from his warrant surely didn’t include trade in illegal drugs.

  Dansby examined the crates here.

  They were all much of a type — banged up, dented, scraped, and gouged by years of service on thrice as many ships. These contents weren’t new from some manufactory or Naval yard, they were tossed haphazardly into whatever container happened to be about the chandlery.

  He thought back to crates he’d been pushing. If there were more addle, then there had to be some way to identify those crates. Fell would want them left well alone.

  He edged his way farther back into the stacks, almost to Tyche’s hull, and there he saw what must be the mark — a blaze of paint just near the handle facing out into the aisle. The crates he’d moved had just such a marking — new-made and not as worn as the others.

  The latch gave way easily and he lifted the lid to reach inside, feeling the same foil packets he’d expected. One came out, briefly, just to confirm it was addle.

  It was, and, that crate safely latched again, a cursory look found three others with similar blazes.

  It was not only Ravenstone, then. There were more stations and more worlds being supplied the addle by Tyche.

  Dansby made his way back to the space between the vats where he’d left the stolen addle. He needed some time alone to think on what to do.

  He sat back down and drew his knees up to his chest, then crossed his arms over them and rested his chin there. His thoughts had a weight he could feel and it was more than his neck alone could support, it seemed.

  The Navy was supposed to protect the colonies from things like this, not engage in it. Dansby didn’t object to mind-altering substances on any sort of moral level — the Dark knew he’d engage in any amount of sense-dulling alterations he could manage via a portside pub — but addle wasn’t something a man took by choice. The stuff took away all choice, and that, a bit to his surprise and no small amount of consternation, made him angry.

  Which made him angrier still.

  “It’s none of my concern,” he muttered. “Really. When one gets right down to it. Not a bit.”

  An all too familiar voice sounded in his head and he nearly looked around to see how Kaycie had made her way aboard Tyche to play conscience in his deliberations.

  Well, nor were Wilmott back on Keldworth Heath and his plans for those mining charges.

  “That was different.”

  How so?

  “Wilmott made me a party to it — well, Carlton did, giving me the job and all.”

  You unloaded the crates.

  “You know, it’s a bit unfair of you to be here lighting me up about it when you didn’t bother to get me off this bloody ship in the first place.”

  You’re ignoring the issue. They got you unloading the crate — doesn’t that involve you?

  Dansby frowned. “No … not the same. Not a bit of concern here.”

  Those men and women are trapped on Ravenstone. The addle will keep them about their business there with no chance to say “no”.

  “The Fringe is a hard place, with every world having it’s down-trodden folk. There’s little I can do to save myself and those I care for, much less complete strangers.”

  Do you think the addle’s limited to the miners? What about the girls in the houses?

  “I couldn’t say — I wasn’t allowed off-ship and didn’t frequent such places. I certainly wouldn’t partake if I suspected, but it’s not my business to go about the universe saving them all.”

  You could save these, or at least try. Just a word to the authorities is all it takes — not like you’d have to blow up a planet.

  “I didn’t blow up Keldworth Heath. Only a bit of it. Have my own problems, anyway. Stuck in the Navy, if you’ll recall, and no ship or other resources to go about saving bloody planets.”

  Hmph.

  “You’re not even here, so it’s not as though that should work, you know.”

  Silence.

  “The silent treatment from an imaginary voice is not, on the whole, an effective tactic. And I’m not even sure Kaycie would want me to get involved at all, little mind the voice. She’d want me to get home safe, anyway, not go about trying to rescue some world I’d never have heard of, save for being accidentally pressed into the bloody Navy.”

  Silence.

  Then, sounding in his mind in a tone Dansby knew only too well — the tone that fairly dripped with the tangible disappointment of every woman who’d ever breathed, as though they bundled all that up in one package and passed it about for when one of them needed it:

  Fine.

  “Oh … bugger it.”

  “A G9?” Fell asked.

  Dansby nodded.

  “That’s a mighty tablet,” Fell said. “Most calls for that come from the lieutenants — captains, even.”

  “Is it not allowed?” Dansby asked. “For a common spacer to have one, I mean.”

  Fell pursed his lips. “Can’t say as there’s any regulation, I suppose.”

  “And you do have one?”

  “It’s not stock — little call for it, as I said. I do have the plans, though — take only a bit to print it. What you want it for?”

  Dansby shrugged. “I’ve heard it’s the best for entertainments and we’ve had some long tacks of late, and not been allowed liberty while in port.”

  Fell nodded. “Keep to yourself, I’ve seen.” He sighed. “There’s the cost, though, lad.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve little else to spend my pay on, have I?”

  “Well, payments, yes,” Fell said, his nose twitching, “but there’s the upfront, you see? And your pay’s still in arrears.”

  “The upfront?”

  “It’s not stock, as I said. Not on a shelf just taking up space, you see? Printing new?” He shook his head. “Well, that’s stores could be used for something else. Have to pay for that.”

  “How much?”

  Fell tapped at his own tablet for a moment. “You’re surely in a heat for such a thing, but it’s fif — sixty pounds,” Fell said, cutting his eyes from his tablet to Dansby. Those eyes narrowed. “I’d need ten up front, no doubt, and the rest would carry on the books. Half your pay and no further credit from me, mind you.” He sighed and shook his head. “Still can’t do it until you’re off arrears — two months.”

  Dansby winced. Fell’s price was nearly five times what the thing should cost. It wasn’t the coin, nor even half his miserly Naval pay in installments that bothered him — he didn’t plan to be aboard Tyche long enough for it to make a difference — but he didn’t have the ten pounds up front Fell wanted, nor did he have the two months the man wanted him to wait. He’d like to throw a wrench of some sort into Tyche’s smuggling, then be off and reunite with Elizabeth within their next stop or two.

  “I can let you have a Europa Six,” Fell said. “Good tablet, let a man watch what entertainments he will, with no stuttering about, even on the gundeck …” The purser gave Dansby a knowing look. “Or in the hold, if privacy’s a concern. Ten pounds even, and a bargain.”

  Dansby had to stop himself from snorting derision. The Europa was what he’d played with as a child and the company had been out of business for nearly half the time since then.

  And overpriced at ten pounds new — to have one now it would have to be a dead man’s.

  He wondered how many times the purser might have sold that particular Europa to some spacer, payments over time, and then taken it back into stock when the ship saw an action that lef
t the fellow dead. Which, in the end, didn’t really matter, since the Europa wouldn’t do the job he needed done.

  Dansby shook his head. “No, that won’t work for me.”

  He thought furiously. He needed that tablet for any sort of plan to work. Yet, without a bit of coin to his name and, so far as Fell could know, only his Naval pay to draw on, cash was not a thing he could offer.

  Information, though, might be a thing. If Fell were in on the smuggling with Beardsley, then he might bite at a contact for some other cargoes, the names of which Dansby had in abundance, thanks to Eades and Her Majesty’s Foreign Office — all the fixers for this whole sector of space, come to that. At least the ones a viper like Eades felt was of more use out and about than locked up.

  The names themselves were all aboard Elizabeth, but Dansby could remember a few.

  He’d only need to feel the purser out a bit and see if he was a part of the ring, open to negotiations.

  He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the counter and looked Fell in the eye. “Surely, Mister Fell, there’s an arrangement could be made?” He smiled, being sure to keep it friendly and charming — the sort he might use in a pub to set the serving girl to seeing his table a bit more than was strictly needful. “I wasn’t always a Navy man, you know? I’ve been out and about in the world — turned my hand to more than one thing to earn my way. I’ve surely learned a thing or two a man like yourself might find of more use than a few coins.” Dansby winked. “What do you say?”

  “But I’m not —”

  “Look,” Heritage, the marine guard, said from outside Dansby’s tiny cell in Tyche’s tiny brig. “I’ll not judge. What a man’s particular preference is —”

  “But I’m —”

  “Is no business of mine,” Heritage went on over Dansby’s protestations. “And how a man chooses to earn his way is no more my business than what else butters his turnips as they say —”