Maybe the man was dense enough that he’d hare off to ask the purser —
“Bollocks!”
Well, no, couldn’t be that lucky then. Where was the right turn of a card when you really needed it?
Tart drew a pistol and pointed it at Dansby.
Well, that’s gone all teats up rather quickly, hasn’t it? And where’d the man get a sidearm? He’d have to have seen the marines or an officer, unless Tyche handed out keys to the armory to the master’s mates and I’d not heard — no, never mind.
Dansby slowly raised his hands. “No need for that, Mister Tart, surely —”
“Drop it!”
“What —”
Whether it was the twitch of Tart’s eye or finger, Dansby couldn’t say, but he dropped himself rather than the screwdriver he assumed Tart was yelling about, ducking down behind the crate just as Tart fired.
A bullet spanged off the airlock hatch and three more struck the crate and crate lid.
“Bloody hell, man!” Dansby yelled. “That’s a bit much, don’t you think?”
“I’ve had my eye on you, Dansby!” Tart yelled. “Or is it Herr Dansby? Bloody Hannie spy! Sending word of what Tyche’s about back to your masters in Hanover!”
“Are you mad? Tyche’s about patrolling a bloody mining sector! What cares Hanover for that? We’re not even at war with them — at the moment. I think.”
The on-again / off-again warring with New London’s neighbor wasn’t something Dansby normally paid much attention to, save when his ship might be close to a border.
“You’ll tell the captain that when you face him! Now come out!”
Four more shots hit the crate, two going right through the corners to either side of Dansby, sending bits of the crate’s thermoplastic flying about the airlock.
“A bloke’s more like to come out if you don’t shoot immediately after saying to,” Dansby offered.
“Come out of there!”
Four more shots.
That’s eleven, Dansby thought. Which does me shite-all good when I don’t really know how many his bloody pistol holds. Nine? Be more than that. Eleven and done? Thirteen? Fifteen? Why are all I’ve ever heard odd numbers? Couldn’t have got himself a laser, so he’d have only the one shot from the capacitor and then have to reload? One’s quite a bit easier to keep track of than —
“Bugger it,” Dansby muttered.
He popped his arm over the top of the crate to throw the screwdriver where he thought Tart might be, then dashed around the crate’s corner.
The pistol boomed again, sounding much louder now that he was exposed, but Tart was firing at the other side, his arm coming around to bring it to bear on Dansby, but Dansby was faster.
He drove his head into the master’s mate’s gut, wrapping his right arm around the man’s back, and flailing his left to get hold of his gun arm.
Momentum drove them back through the open hatch into Tyche’s hold, then into a stack of crates, trapping Tart between that and Dansby’s driving legs, with Dansby’s head in his midsection.
“Ooof!”
Dansby took the sound of air rushing from Tart’s lungs as an opportunity. He stood up, got a good grip on Tart’s right arm with both hands, and did his very best to rip the thing right off. At worst, he thought he might fling the man about, at best make him drop the pistol.
Unfortunately, Tart, even with no air in his lungs, was quite a bit larger than Dansby, and so Dansby discovered what happens when an immovable object meets a very much resistible force.
Tart stayed in place, Dansby’s hands slid down the material of Tart’s vacsuit to lock on the man’s wrist, and the whole effort merely extended both their arms straight out and left Dansby staring straight at the rather large bore down the barrel of the man’s pistol.
For a moment, Dansby fancied he could see the bullet itself, far down there, but then self-preservation took over and he ducked away just as Tart fired.
Hot gas and … no, he wouldn’t think about what else flashed by his face, at least not until he was tucked safe in a bed somewhere and could give it proper attention in a nightmare.
Dansby twisted and turned, doing all he could to simply keep the bloody barrel pointed away from him, because, after all, that was twelve, wasn’t it, and arms manufacturers being what they were, there was certainly at least one more bullet in the thing.
Tart, though, was stronger, heavier, and — as Dansby found when the man raised a heavy boot and brought it skidding down Dansby’s shin, scraping away at the very bone, it seemed, even through the heavy vacsuit — a dirtier fighter.
I can fix that, Dansby thought.
The fight had brought the pistol close to Dansby’s face again, though, thankfully, not that terribly distressing bit with the hole in it, as Tart fired again.
Dansby opened his mouth and, though there was almost certainly some Naval regulation about doing so to a master’s mate, clamped his teeth down on Tart’s trigger finger.
He got Tart’s knuckle, which was large and pronounced, behind his teeth and began worrying at the digit like he was trying to strip the last bit of flesh from a chicken drumstick, grinding his teeth and shaking his head back and forth while Tart screamed curses at him.
Blood filled his mouth and dripped down his chin, but on he went.
Tart tried to shake him off — quite literally as the big master’s mate stood, gripped Dansby’s head with his free hand and raised both arms until Dansby’s feet left the floor.
“Buggerin’, lyin’, spyin’, cheat!” Tart yelled, spinning to get a bit of momentum.
Dansby lost his grip in the spin, hands and teeth both, though he retained quite a bit of meat, and was flung back into the airlock. He rolled, cracking his head painfully on Fell’s crate, then his face as he rolled to slam into the outer hatch.
Tart entered the lock and rested against the crate.
Dansby struggled to his feet.
He was wearied beyond what such a short fight should account for.
“Imno —” Dansby spat, clearing his mouth of bits of knuckle-meat and hoped Tart had led a reasonably virtuous life as he failed to get all the blood out. “I’m no spy.”
“We’ll see,” Tart said. “Bloody cheat, though, biting.”
“You brought a bloody pistol!”
Tart grinned and raised his arm to point the very thing at Dansby. “Aye, I did, and — bugger me!”
The pistol’s slide was back.
Fourteen and done? There’s a wonder —
Dansby’s relief broke off as voices shouted in the hold, approaching.
Others on the ship must have heard the shots and there’d be marines responding, each with their own weapons and quite a bit better at fighting than Dansby.
He took in his position, near the outer hatch, Tart in the lock with him, the master’s mate’s hand bloody and bits of him still caught between Dansby’s teeth, the crate of Fell’s treasure still here with ship’s light attached.
Dansby sighed.
No, explaining this away was right out.
“Sorry,” he said to Tart as he locked his vacsuit helmet in place.
Dansby pounded his fist on the lock’s emergency button.
An airlock normally took some time to cycle, drawing its air back into tanks for reuse before it could be opened to the vacuum outside.
There were times, though, when that time was too much.
An injured man outside the lock might need to get back in faster, so it might be best to simply dump the air and accept the cost. It wasn’t a thing the common crew would do lightly, even an officer might think twice — air was life in the Dark, and dumping even a bit of it off into the void was a bitter choice.
Dansby’s fist mashed the button and the lock’s inner hatch slammed shut even as the outer opened.
He had time to hear only an inarticulate shout from Tart before the sound of rushing air echoed through his helmet while the master’s mate scrabbled at his own to swing it
over his head and into place.
Another effect of the opened hatch was that the darkspace radiations made their way into the lock, shutting down the electronics, including the ship’s antigrav there.
The crate of metals, its own mass no longer holding it down, gave in to the brief rush of air and moved slowly — slowly but inexorably — toward the open lock.
Dansby, the magnets in his vacsuit boots holding him to the lock’s deck, was right in the way, but had no qualms about it. He gripped the crate’s edge as it approached, twisted his feet just so, and drifted out of the lock very nearly as he’d planned to all along.
He’d not, though, planned for Tart to step forward and grasp the crate’s far edge, his own helmet now in place and scrabbling to get a vacsuit glove on his injured hand.
“Let go, you bloody fool!” Dansby yelled, his voice echoing in his helmet for himself alone, as the radios couldn’t transmit against the dark energy winds.
Tart was a fool, though he didn’t know it yet.
He might have seen that the crate was nearly empty, but couldn’t have seen that what its bottom was filled with — gold, silver, platinum, and the even denser gallenium — gave it more mass than any crate of stores the master’s mate had ever dealt with before.
Muscles built up heaving masts and yards about were no match for the crate once it had got moving, no matter how slowly.
Tart’s fingers grasped the crate. His body stretched, boots clinging to the metal of Tyche’s deck, yet, still, the crate slipped out of the lock.
Once there, the darkspace winds raging about the ship were able to get a grip on it. Weaker near the hull where the gallenium there insulated the ship itself, but strong enough to be felt.
A gust took the crate in the side, starting it to twist and turn.
Tart strained, face twisting with the effort, teeth showing white behind his helmet’s visor, illuminated by the light atop the crate.
Then his boots clicked free of the deck and the last thing holding master’s mate Tart, purser Fell’s crate of ill-earned wealth, and a cursing Avrel Dansby to the safety of a ship was gone, giving darkspace free rein over all.
Twenty-One
Tyche flowed past.
Slowly, at first, almost imperceptibly.
The gaping maw of the airlock moved first away and then on, as the crate and its contents gained distance from the hull and were then caught up in the morass of dark matter that permeated all, slowed while the ship was propelled on by dark energy against its sails.
It was peaceful at first, still close to Tyche’s gallenium hull and the field that metal projected when properly charged.
Then they drifted a bit more, Tyche moved on a bit more, and all at once, faster than Dansby could credit, the ship’s massive plane and rudder were rushing past and the ship began to pull away, really away, not beside them any longer, which offered some semblance of safety, but moving off into the distance.
The winds struck them full force — unmitigated by the sails or hull. They lashed against men and crate, both, while the full pressure of the surrounding dark matter began to make itself known.
Dansby met Tart's eyes across the width of the crate and other man’s eyes were wide with fear, his mouth moving in words Dansby couldn’t hear.
“I did try to warn you,” Dansby muttered, working his shoulders inside his vacsuit to try and shrug off the sudden feeling there was a wall at his back. A wall pressing in — no, not a wall, but a slide of mud, oozing all about him and enclosing him in darkness.
A gust of wind flowed, whipping that feeling away as it gathered up dark matter to fling about, then another, knocking Dansby against the crate’s side and pinning him there with the force it carried.
On the crate’s other side, Tart was flung up, feet upraised above the open crate, by another gust, then twisted about so that he lost his grip with one hand.
Dansby pulled himself over the crate’s edge, hoping it would offer some shelter as he’d planned, and grasped Tart’s arm, with one hand, holding his other out to the man.
At first, he thought the master’s mate wouldn’t trust him and would seek his own grip on the crate, then the man’s flailing hand found his and he braced himself to pull.
The crate tumbled, struck by another gust, and seemed to bounce off a collection of dark matter, like a boat tossed against a rock by the river’s current. The lid came down, nearly catching half of Tart outside, but Dansby’s last, desperate heave got the man inside.
Dansby pressed his helmet to Tart’s.
“… idiot, bleeding-arsemonger!” Tart yelled.
Tart’s eyes were wide, his lips flecked with foam as he continued to rant, and it was only, Dansby suspected, his utter fury that kept him from feeling the Dark press in as Dansby did.
He’d known the crate would offer scant shelter, but hoped the presence of the solid block of gallenium bars at its bottom might help.
That wasn’t how it worked, he knew. The effects of the metal were more localized to its surface, like that which coated a ship’s hull. One had to be enclosed in the stuff to be fully protected, but surely so very much of it, in so enclosed a space, must offer some respite? Even uncharged by a ship’s particle projectors, it must help some?
For his part, he couldn’t tell now if it helped at all.
The Dark was all around, still, pressing in. Like laying on a great featherbed while six others were piled on top.
The spot between his shoulders ached to tell him there was something behind him, sneaking up — beside him, in front of him, all closing in and soon he’d be crushed to nothing.
The crate tumbled and spun, knocked all about by the winds, and though there was no up or down for those inside, there was momentum, mass, and inertia — all of which colluded to send them banging about into crate walls, each other, still loose bottles of spare air, and, worst of all, hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of little metal bars that all got loose from their storage and flung about, knocking into crate walls and its two inhabitants both.
“… thieving … skiving … bellend … knob-brained … bastard …”
Dansby stopped trying to touch helmets with Tart and simply let the man scream into the silent void between them. He was only catching one word in four, regardless, and had the gist fine from those.
Instead he set about getting the interior of the crate back to a semblance of rights. Metal bars and air canisters were everywhere, and needed to be stowed.
He’d just grasped two canisters of air when darkspace had its way with the crate.
The lid, which had swung closed, opened once more, both spilling contents to the void and offering yet another surface to the winds. Those winds took the offering and more, ripping the lid away, sending it, and the ship’s light atop it, skittering away.
Dansby reached for it, hands full of air bottles, but it was too far and gone before he even started.
Whether, open-topped, the crate would have stood up to the battering of dark energy against dark matter on its own couldn’t be said — Dansby ever-after maintained that his original plan was sound, and it was but Tart’s shooting up the crate that weakened it so. Regardless, the winds found its open top, the sides were driven against masses of dark matter, the seams creaked, split, and, finally, ripped apart.
Walls and bottom of the crate flew away, no two going in the same direction, while its contents seemed to explode in an ever-expanding cloud of debris.
Dansby wrapped his legs around Tart’s torso, whether to save the man or unwilling, himself, to give up the one other human with him in the suddenly endless void.
He grasped desperately about, grabbing at whatever was near. Bars of gallenium and bottles of air at the forefront of his thoughts.
Round or purple, round or purple …
The chant ran through his head, the only two things that might offer some hope for survival, either a bit of protection from the Dark or a few more breaths.
He grasped, grabbed,
and shoved what he could into his vacsuits pockets, tool belt, wrapped them in its now useless safety lines, or tucked them beneath his arms.
He thought to enlist Tart to help, but a single look to the man’s face, illuminated now only by the glow from the chemical lights inside his helmet, revealed eyes nearly as wide as the mouth open in a drawn-out scream.
Tart was gone, mind lost in a spacer’s terror of being adrift in the Dark.
Dansby wrapped a safety line around the man, trapping his arms to his sides so that he’d have no chance to dump his air as many did.
There was still a chance, he was sure, and that was all that kept him from giving in the same as the master’s mate had done.
Kaycie was out there, and Kaycie wouldn’t let him down.
She knew his madness and would suss out his plan the moment she saw a lighted crate skip loose from Tyche. Kaycie would be coming, and, along with her, Elizabeth and safety.
Dansby held her image in his head — it kept the all-enclosing Dark back from him.
Nothing more he could reach — it was all flowing away, knocked here and there by the winds as he and Tart were.
Light.
He needed light. Something for Kaycie to find him by, and the light from the crate was gone, maybe leading her astray.
He got in his vacsuit’s pouch, then in Tart’s, and pulled out all the chemical sticks they both had, cracked them in his hands, and stuck their sticky, phosphorescent tubes to his helmet and Tart’s.
The Book, the rules for all the safety gear aboard ship, said use them sparingly — make them last, so that a ship might have more time to find you. Probably written by some fool who’d never been a’space, let alone outside a hull in the Dark.
Bugger that sideways, Dansby thought.
He needed light — a great, bleeding ball of it, so that Elizabeth’s optics would pick them up and bring Kaycie to pull him inboard and out of this mess.
Next was the gallenium — so much lost to the dark, and Dansby almost cried at that wealth gone, but there were bars and bars still in his pockets now.
Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Box Set Page 26
