Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Box Set

by J. A. Sutherland

  Rabbit looked back at him, smiled wider, then gave him a jaunty finger-wave before turning again to dash up a ramp onto a waiting pinnace.

  Dansby grimaced and ran harder.

  That must be her own craft — somewhat larger than a ship’s boat, and capable of some travel in the Dark, if one weren’t entirely particular about accommodations and supplies.

  She must have been ready to lift, as well, as the ramp started rising as soon as Rabbit’s feet touched it.

  Dansby put his head down, pumping legs and arms.

  He leapt, boots clanging on the rising ramp.

  “Damn you! I want my eight pou —”

  “… a leg!”

  Aye, it was — and a fine leg at that.

  Dansby had his arms wrapped around the leg and face and lips tightly pressed to its soft, smooth skin. He gave it another bit of a peck and began working his way higher. It wasn’t Kaycie’s leg, which should worry him, but he had that sort of background knowledge one gets that this was a dream, so he was safe there — so long as he didn’t wake her with murmurs of some other name, at least.

  “… a leg!”

  Yes, yes, he knew that and why there was shouting like that in his naked-leg dream confused him. Was this one of those dreams where two things were conflated? Perhaps naked legs with one of his old school’s anatomy lessons? Shall we name some parts?

  A leg, he thought, working his way up with a kiss, a knee, a thigh, a —

  “Shake a leg!”

  Now, why would one want to —

  Dansby was falling — bloody hell, he hated those sorts of dreams. He’d read once where it meant some sort of anxiety or feeling out of control in one’s daily —

  “Oof!”

  “On your bloody feet, Dansby!” Tart yelled. “You’ve slept your bloody drunk off enough!”

  Tart moved on with a heavy boot for Dansby’s side and Jordan knelt beside him.

  “Here you go, lad, up and about,” Jordan said. “Slept near the whole liberty away and more.”

  Dansby turned his head from side to side slowly. It ached with more than the aftermath of drink — and his jaw was sore and swollen, with a tender spot just there.

  “Bloody brambles,” he muttered.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  He rose and looked around Tyche’s gundeck, trying to get his bearings and adjust to waking here when the last he remembered —

  Last I remember is that little bint’s grin.

  Rabbit had been past the ramp’s top, turned to face him, hands on hips, and a wide grin, then … darkness.

  No, not darkness, a black wave — like a rolling field of darkspace itself coming between them and lastly a spot of white, like a laser shot from a ship’s gun flashing toward his face, and finally nothing.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  Jordan stepped away with a laugh. “As I hear it, marines found you laying on the field and drug you back to the boat. Must’ve been a good one.”

  Dansby sighed. “Aye, a good one,” he allowed.

  All around him, spacers were folding their bunks up against the bulkhead, making the ship ready for the day’s work. They were in motion, he could tell — there was something about a ship that a man could tell she was in orbit, over underway in normal-space, or under sail in darkspace. More a feeling than anything he could point to, but he was certain they were underway.

  Back aboard Tyche. He felt at his pockets, finding them empty. Two pounds lighter for my efforts, and without a thing I need to leave this ship with Fell’s ill-got gains.

  Eighteen

  Tyche left Greater Ashton, and, again, Dansby was beset by work.

  Far more, he estimated, than necessary, now that he thought about it, given the ship’s oversized crew — the Navy, after all, staffed their ships to account for losses in battle, repair of damage from enemy shot, and sending crews aboard prizes. A merchantman of similar size handled tacking against a system’s winds with less than one hundred men, while Stansfield set every one of his more than three hundred to working at every opportunity.

  As Stansfield called to leave a tack that, to Dansby’s eye, would have been perfectly fine for an hour’s more time, he became more and more convinced that Tyche’s captain, and the Navy in general, simply made up more work for their oversized crews, in an effort to keep the men from sitting idle.

  It did give Dansby an opportunity, though.

  With so many men rushing about at all times, it was simple enough for him to place himself for the jobs he wished — not those requiring the least effort, not this time at least, but those giving him the opportunity to find aboard Tyche what he hadn’t had the opportunity to buy on Greater Ashton.

  “Mister Tart, sir,” Dansby said, exiting the ship’s forward sail locker. “The spare air bottles are empty, sir!”

  Tart’s face — far too close to Dansby’s own as they touched helmets in order to speak on the ship’s hull where darkspace radiations kept their suit radios from working — twisted in a scowl. “Lazy bastards not setting them to refill,” he snarled. “Hook them up, Dansby! Then off to the purser and bring back a round dozen filled from stores! I’ll hear no excuses when next we tack! Lively now!”

  Dansby went, lively as he could in the movement restricting vacsuit.

  Back to the sail locker where he connected all the empty spare bottles to the locker’s air tubes, first adjusting the valves where he’d knocked them with his elbow when his watch was first called to the sails. It wouldn’t do for them to empty themselves again, after all.

  Then down to the purser’s office.

  “Mister Tart’s compliments, Mister Fell, and I’m to have two dozen of filled air bottles for the forward sail locker.”

  Fell snorted, left off whatever he was about on his tablet — likely a tallying of his ill-gotten gains and some daydreaming about what he’d do with those when Tyche paid off — and shuffled back to his storeroom.

  The bottles, each about the size of Dansby’s forearm, held enough air to enable a man to breathe in his suit for four hours — if he weren’t working hard or exerting himself in any particular way. Two would generally keep a man breathing through a single watch, even on the heavy work of the sails, but some would always gasp and groan more than their fellows, so the spares would go in the sail locker, close enough to swap out without too much time away from their work.

  Dansby nodded to Fell, grasped the two handled cartons of bottles, one each hand, and hurried off.

  He didn’t try to get the extra dozen he’d got from Fell to any particular place before heading back to the sails, only tucked them into a shadowy corner of the hold to deal with later.

  There’d be an accounting between Tart and Fell of the number asked for and the number remaining in the sail locker, but with the reported storms ahead of them that would likely wait until they were at their next port or beyond.

  He racked the bottles in the sail locker, swapped his own for fresh, and turned up his mixture a bit, feeling quite a bit better with the cool rush of more oxygen against his face inside the hot vacsuit. The prospect of several more hours playing pulley-hauley with the sails wasn’t nearly so bad when one was a step closer to leaving it behind with a fortune in someone else’s ill-got gains.

  The other items he needed were not nearly so easy to get, but he managed.

  Batteries were surprisingly hard, so he settled for a shot canister for the guns, freshly charged but discarded to the deck unspent during a gun drill, then secreted in the hold as its fellows were taken to the magazine for recharging.

  The thing’s capacitors were meant to discharge their power in one, vastly powerful surge, but could be made to do so more gradually, as with any other sort of storage system.

  A ship’s light came from normal maintenance, convincing a master’s mate, Tart again, that this one seemed a bit dim compared to the others, and then, even if the man didn’t agree, being sent to retrieve and install a
replacement, if only as punishment for bothering one’s betters.

  That the replacement came from Fell’s stores and the replaced was to go back to the carpenter’s workshop for repair only ensured that the missing light would not be discovered for some time — and then, with Avrel Dansby a very dim memory, if remembered at all, likely put down to unrecorded battle damage.

  Dansby paused in his exit from the hold and looked back down the vast space to the purser’s office and the carpenter’s space at the far end.

  All these stores, all this equipment — and Fell the man to account for it all. Sweet Dark, the aftermath of a battle when he might write off everything he likes, damaged or no, must be like Boxing Day for the man.

  He thought, if he were ever to find himself without the means for a ship of his own, yet still with some funds, the purchase of a Naval purser’s warrant might be in order. There was certainly profit to be had for a sharp man, and little danger unless the whole bloody ship went up.

  Tyche entered the Single’s Folly storms the next day.

  Nineteen

  Single’s Folly was a system with no real planets, only a huge star — one much larger than any habitable system had. That size was the cause of a near-perpetual storm around Single’s Folly, as the darkspace winds were pulled into the system’s mass with far more force than one normally encountered.

  Dansby wasn’t quite sure how much larger than normal Single’s Folly was, he skipped over the technical details in the system’s sailing notes he called up on his tablet, concentrating on the practical notice to spacers of how to deal with the system.

  The station was far off from the star itself, out in the far reaches where what few comets survived their ventures toward Single’s Folly recovered themselves and the scattered rocks, none large enough to be called a planet, zipped about.

  If the place hadn’t been rich in gallenium, it wouldn’t have a station at all.

  The station itself trailed along with one of the larger rocks, using the thing’s weak, but present, Lagrangian points to provide access to darkspace. Even with that, there was but one station, and it with a sailing note to not, under any circumstances, no matter how dire, use the Lagrangian-1 point between station and star to transition from darkspace.

  That would put one just a bit too close to Single’s Folly itself, and, while the gravities might balance themselves out at that particular point, one needn’t go too much closer before Single’s Folly began to pull at one rather greedily.

  Best to stick to the L4 and L5 points ahead and behind of the rock’s orbit, or L3 on the far side of Single’s Folly, if one had business there.

  Dansby made a note of that, should Elizabeth have to put in to Single’s Folly after he was back aboard. He didn’t think they would, as he’d want to turn tail and get well away from Single’s Folly, Tyche, and, come to that, the fellow he was about to steal at least a hundred thousand pounds from.

  On the other hand, there was Rabbit and the matter of his eight, now ten, pounds.

  Perhaps he would keep Elizabeth in the area for a bit looking for the bint — a principle was involved, after all.

  Out on the hull as they entered the winds, Dansby fancied he could see Elizabeth’s lights behind them.

  He’d told Kaycie to follow Tyche at a distance until they were near the storms, and Elizabeth’s sails were so much smaller than the Navy frigate’s that Kaycie would have no trouble keeping the larger ship in view while hiding herself.

  Once in the storms, though, she was to close up.

  Stansfield would find nothing odd in this — with the effect of the strong dark energy winds blowing up bits of dark matter he’d not be able to identify Elizabeth and it was not so unusual for one ship to seek out another in such conditions.

  Not so close that they might be driven into one another, but close enough that one might offer assistance if the other came in need.

  The work on the sails to approach Single’s Folly was nothing like what would be necessary to depart.

  The winds drove relentlessly straight toward the system’s center, so all Tyche had to worry about was to put herself on a run before them and take in sail so that her masts didn’t snap from the force. In truth, she could have strung up bare poles and charged the masts and spars, instead of the metal mesh of the sails, and she’d have still made good time.

  Crewmen who’d blithely rely on their safety lines, with nary a hand or foot in contact with the ship — or even leave their lines off, flinging themselves from one spot on the hull to another, clipping and unclipping lines as they left and arrived — under normal conditions took the old adage “one hand for the ship and one for yourself” to heart, pulling up sail with one hand while the other, and its arm, were locked about the yard, or gripping any line they were set to work with a grip as though their life depended on it.

  In a way, it did.

  Dansby looked aft into the blurry, swirling, black-on-blackness of the Dark.

  Going off the hull into darkspace, away from the protecting field of the hull’s gallenium, at the best of times was a harrowing experience. The vacsuits had no gallenium to buffer the dark matter’s effects, the metal was far too expensive to trust to the suits a crewman used.

  Once away from the hull, a man would feel the full impact of the dark matter and dark energy winds, and those who’d experienced it were never quite the same after.

  In fair conditions, a man might be overboard for minutes, if a mate were quick with a line to rescue him, or more if the ship had to turn back or put out a boat to retrieve him.

  In these conditions, the man was lost — by the time Tyche could put about and work her way back, even if she could find the man by his weak suit lights in the blurry fog of stirred dark matter, he’d have been too long in the stuff.

  More than one spacer had been recovered after too many minutes there, dead not from darkspace, but from having dumped his own air so as not to suffer, thinking he’d be gone before his ship came back anyway and better not to wait.

  Was that a light in the distance?

  Regardless, it was time, and he’d have to count on Kaycie to have followed his instructions and be there for him.

  He waved to the nearest master’s mate — Tart again, and wouldn’t Dansby be pleased to see the back of the man? It was difficult to keep the pleasure of that prospect out of his voice as he touched helmets.

  “I’m sorry, Mister Tart,” he said, “but I’m breathing heavier than I ought, and nearly out of air. Permission to swap my tanks, sir?”

  “Be quick about it, Dansby!” Tart yelled, somewhat more loudly than was strictly needed to carry his voice between their touching helmets. “Lively now!”

  “Aye, sir!” Dansby bellowed back, hoping he might leave the man with a ruptured eardrum to remember him by.

  Dansby made his way to the sail locker and cycled the hatch. His tanks were only half-empty, but he swapped them anyway — air was what he’d need most in this, and a bit more wouldn’t go amiss.

  He cycled a hatch again, but this time into the ship itself, not back onto the hull.

  Inside, Tyche had the hushed feeling of a ship underway in heavy winds, as though all aboard were walking carefully and keeping a bit quieter, so as not to draw more attention from what raged outside the hull. Even inboard, where the effects of a sudden gust were mitigated by the ship’s inertial compensators, there were hands on rails or coamings or leaping from chair back to table as the crew moved about, careful and ready for the deck beneath their feet to either disappear or fling them upwards without warning.

  Spacers, suited and not, hurried about, so Dansby’s presence wasn’t unusual. All would assume he’d been sent inboard on some errand, and the most an officer might say about it was that he should hurry on, and that only if he were seen to dawdle.

  Dansby did not dawdle.

  He hurried to the forward companionway, and then down toward the hold.

  There he hurried past Fell’s desk — the
purser was busy with another, doling out some part or another to replace what was broken by the storm.

  Farther aft, nearly to the very stern, just by the aft airlock, where he’d stashed an antigrav cart.

  Quick as he could without attracting attention — for while moving about the ship might be normal in such a storm, a single spacer shifting cargo was not — Dansby slid a cart under the crate, and lifted up what he already considered his very own fortune of metals, along with what supplies he’d stashed there.

  He got the crate into the airlock, lowered it to the deck, and slid the antigrav cart back into the ship, then opened the crate’s lid — reached inside and withdrew the borrowed ship’s light and gallenium encased shot canister. The metal of the canister would allow the electrics inside to work even exposed to the dark energy radiations of open darkspace. He’d ratcheted down the power output of the shot’s capacitors so that it wouldn’t blow the light right out, merely activate the lasing tubes at the shot’s end to produce a stream of light and not the devastating blast of a ship’s gun.

  The light itself was simply the output of some fiber strands and not the source itself, so the light from the shot went through a bit of cable, then was directed and magnified by the reflective surface of the lamp, to shine off into space.

  Dansby attached lamp and shot canister to the crate’s top, then bashed the switch on the shot’s base, much as the firing of a gun.

  Light, bright and nearly blinding flooded the airlock just as the inner hatch cycled to reveal a vacsuited figure.

  “Thought you were being a devious bastard,” Tart said.

  Twenty

  “Ah, Mister Tart,” Dansby said, “I’m just …” He looked around the airlock, taking in the large cargo crate, the open lid, the ship’s light and shot canister attached to the lid, and, though Tart was too far away yet to see inside, the gleam of gold, silver, and purple-shot cream from the bars of metal. “Ah, doing a thing with this crate of Mister Fell’s.”