Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Box Set

by J. A. Sutherland

  His vacsuit pouch held a little tube of sealant, that would do.

  Bars here and there, stuck to him and Tart — more for him, Tart could go barking mad from the Dark for all Dansby cared, but he’d spare a few for the man. Mostly around their helmets the bars went.

  Didn’t work that way — had to be a full, complete layer, or specs of it, close enough together to make no never mind, cover nearly everything or the bad stuff got in.

  There’s a calculation — a formula — learned it at good old Lesser Sewer. The effect only spreads so far from a bit, no matter how big the bit is. Sweet Dark, but I wish I was back in class right now.

  He tried to work a bar with his fingers, make it soft, maybe it would spread.

  Spread like jam … or marshmallow fluff. He blinked, paused, strained to think what he was about. Marshmallow fluff all around me. Surrounded by the stuff. Pressing in, drowning in it … but why is it all black?

  Dansby shook his head, bit his lip, tried to get his thoughts back from the little ball inside his head they were stuck in, with all else filled with marshmallow fluff and feather beds.

  Kaycie’s coming, he insisted to himself. More to do.

  Air.

  He had to breathe.

  They had to breathe — don’t forget bloody Tart.

  Want the man alive when Kaycie comes.

  Alive and safe aboard Elizabeth.

  So I can strangle the wanker.

  His air gauge was low. How could that be? Had they been that long off Tyche?

  No matter, they had … three spare bottles.

  He nearly laughed. Three of his dozen, and for two people.

  Never mind — three’s too many, anyway. Likely not make it through another before I drown in the fluff.

  He replaced Tart’s, then his own, then let the third drift away. Didn’t need it, couldn’t use it.

  He turned the valves on both suits to a lower setting. They’d have less oxygen in their suits, but it would last longer. Outlast them both, like as not.

  He pressed his helmet to Tart’s.

  “Why is the fluff so dark?” he asked.

  There was no answer. Tart’s mouth was opened wide, but no sound came forth.

  “Is it burnt, do you suppose?” Dansby mused. “What might do that? A torch?” He frowned and stared at the back of Tart’s throat. “Burn the fluff with a torch, like ‘round a campfire … do you suppose that might make a good pudding?”

  Tart rendered no opinion on the matter, and Dansby allowed his own eyes to close.

  Twenty-Two

  “Bloody, idiot, man.”

  At first, Dansby suspected that Tart had come to his senses and resumed berating him, but why would Tart, a man himself, put so much stress on the word as to make it a sort of insult.

  “Damned divvy-headed man.”

  And why would Tart be imitating Kaycie’s voice so?

  No, couldn’t be Tart. It must be the Kaycie in his head, come to pay her respects now he was nearly drowned in the fluff. He could feel it all around him, softly enclosing nearly every bit.

  “Greedy, grasping, selfish, dunce-buggered man.”

  Well, at least he’d die hearing her voice. That was something. He could wish the Kaycie in his head wouldn’t be quite so judgmental about the whole thing. He was quite certain the real Kaycie would be more forgiving. Likely weep up a storm when they laid his empty coffin to rest somewhere — he did hope she’d have the sense not to commit that to the bloody Dark, itself. Bad enough his body’d be there, all covered in fluff. Undignified, that. He’d need a proper plot and a proper stone to offset an eternity drowning in burnt marshmallow.

  “Manky, muppet-brained man.”

  “Oh, do shut up,” Dansby said, insults were one thing, but he’d not take alliteration from a voice in his — “Ow!”

  Dansby opened his eyes, wondering how he’d ever got the Kaycie in his head to wrench his ear nearly off, only to find the very girl seated beside his bed in his cabin aboard Elizabeth. For a moment, he was bewildered, thinking it a dream, but the softness that surrounded him was the down comforter he’d got for his narrow cot and the mattress beneath.

  His mouth was dry, parts of it that oughtn’t be were stuck together and parted almost painfully as he worked his jaw and tongue to get some moisture back. Kaycie took a cup and held it to his lips — a weak grog, very weak, but the spirits and sugar hid the taste of the ship’s water well.

  He reached out to grasp her other hand where it rested beside him and took in her face — hair in disarray, eyes red-rimmed and wet. Well, at least there was that — she might be cursing him, but she did care.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but only the barest sound emerged, and he sipped again at the cup she held to wet his throat, then tried again.

  “Did you get any of the gold at all?”

  Elizabeth’s main deck was as welcome a sight to Dansby as he seemed to be to the crew gathered there — at least through one of his eyes.

  The other wasn’t quite closed, but it was a bit blurry still from Kaycie’s punch — and he felt a bit put-upon by that.

  It wasn’t that his first thought was for the gold — or silver, platinum, and others that had been in Fell’s crate. No, he’d quickly taken in all the important bits: he was alive, he was safe on Elizabeth, Kaycie was there and knew he was alive and safe, if she might have worried, but speaking at all would show he was in good health, wouldn’t it?

  No, the important bits were all self-evident as soon as he’d opened his eyes, so why not ask first about the bits he couldn’t actually know?

  The whereabouts of tens of thousands of pounds of metals must surely be at the top of one’s curiosity list, mustn’t it?

  Bloody women.

  “Where’s Tart?” Dansby asked, after he’d made a walk around the deck to greet his crew and reassure them that he hadn’t perished, no matter what he’d looked like when they’d brought him back aboard.

  “That fellow with you? With the surgeon still, you git,” Kaycie said. “And how did you find another to go along with such stupidity?”

  “His involvement wasn’t strictly planned.”

  Kaycie shook her head. “Men.”

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “I’ll let you know when it’s not, you daft plonker.”

  Dansby started aft for the surgeon’s quarters.

  “It wasn’t such a bad plan, really,” he countered.

  Kaycie’s nostrils flared. “Toss yourself off a ship in those winds riding a bloody box? My brothers built better ships than that in the nursery, out of leftover Boxing Day bits.”

  “It was quite sturdy … until Tart shot it up.”

  Kaycie grasped his shoulder. “You were shot at? Again?”

  Maybe shouldn’t have mentioned that …

  “Is there some reason I should ever let you out of my sight again?” Kaycie asked. “Because I must admit I’m at a loss, it seems you’ve no more than gone round a corner before you’ve lost the plot entirely.”

  “It was a good plan,” Dansby insisted. “There was near a hundred thousand pounds of metals in that crate.”

  “Mm hm,” Kaycie said.

  “And once I’ve sent a message to Captain Stansfield, I’ll have put an end to Tyche’s purser smuggling addle onto all these mining settlements.”

  They reached the orlop and the surgeon’s cubby there. While Elizabeth had no proper surgeon aboard, there were several of the crew who had some knowledge — at least enough to make do for a smuggler’s crew.

  “That could be done without stuffing yourself in a box, you know,” Kaycie said.

  Tart was in a cot against the hull, eyes and mouth, thankfully, closed, so that he looked far more peaceful than when Dansby’d last looked on him.

  “Has he woken at all?” Dansby asked.

  Detheridge shook her head.

  “Good — tie him up before he does, will you?” Both Detheridge and Kaycie gave him a surprise
d look. “What?”

  “Thought he come off that ship with you,” Detheridge said. “Not a friend?”

  Dansby shook his head. “Master’s mate off Tyche. He tried to stop me fleeing and wound up in the lock with me when I blew the air.” He resisted the urge to raise a foot and kick Tart’s still form. “He’s the one shot up my crate and lost us over a hundred thousand pounds.”

  “What’ll we do with him?” Detheridge asked. “Kidnapping a Naval master’s mate isn’t the sort of thing brings a lot of profit, and what it does bring isn’t what we’ll like.”

  Dansby frowned. “Kidnapped a great many master’s mates in your time?”

  Detheridge grinned. “Not like this, no, but there was this young fellow off HMS Sparrow — liked to be tied up and —”

  Dansby cleared his throat. “A different matter, I wager.”

  “Aye, but a fine tale.”

  “Regardless, here’s your chance to tie up a second.” Dansby turned to Kaycie. “Please, do, tell me you saved what gallenium bars I was able to snatch?”

  “The ones glued to your suits? Oh, yes, though you’ll likely have to replace the suits themselves — that’s not what the sealant is for, you know, nor how gallenium works.”

  “I know,” Dansby said before she could launch into a recitation of some lecture back at school on Lesser Sibward.

  “I’ve put it all in the coin chest for the moment,” Kaycie said, “though we should find a more secure place for it.”

  There was truth in that, Dansby thought. Secure from the crew, for one of those bars would see a man set for some time — and secure from search by authorities, for one of those bars would see a man’s head in the noose.

  “Where we’ll find a buyer for that, I don’t know,” Kaycie said.

  Dansby nodded. That would be a bit of trouble. None of their contacts, flexible as they might be in most areas, were the sort who’d deal in gallenium. The Crown had a monopoly on its trade and guarded it jealously. But that was a question for a later day.

  “Where are we? And how long was I out? I should have asked that straight-away.”

  “Nearly a fortnight,” Kaycie said. “If Detheridge hadn’t assured me you’d come around, I’d have —” Her voice trailed off. “I don’t know what I might have done. Upper Mabmond, is where we’re at — we skipped Single’s Folly all entire, what with your Navy ship headed there. Cut the winds to get away without them knowing who we were, in case they thought to be suspicious at someone blowing a lock with a crate of stores and one of their master’s mates, though why they might glance twice at such an expected thing —”

  “Kaycie —”

  “Sven’s little friend!”

  The joyous outcry came simultaneously with Dansby being engulfed in a pair of thick, burly arms and lifted clean off the deck so that his head nearly struck the overhead.

  “Ooof!”

  “Sven is so glad you are safe, little captain friend!”

  The compression of the hug was not nearly so bad as the twisting, as Sven shook Dansby to and fro in his delight.

  “Put him down, you great oaf, he’s not fully recovered yet.”

  “Yes, yes,” Sven said, setting Dansby softly back on the deck and releasing him. “Sven is sorry.” He settled a hand on Dansby’s shoulder, nearly driving him to his knees. “It is only the happiness to see you alive.”

  “Ooof!” Dansby ducked away from the pressing hand and stepped behind Kaycie. “What are you doing here? How did you get away from the Press?”

  “Sven remembers his little friend’s ship name and runs to tell sweet Miss Kaycie of the little captain’s troubles.” He grinned. “Sweet Miss Kaycie has allowed Sven to join the little captain’s crew.”

  “Well, good,” Dansby said — the big man was an enjoyable companion and would do well aboard Elizabeth. “But how did you get away from the Press in the first place?”

  Sven’s brow furrowed, then he shrugged. “Sven has exemption.”

  Dansby sighed. “I hate the bloody Navy.”

  Upper Mabmond was quite the thing, Dansby thought.

  It might not have, say, any sort of industry, save for the growing of food for the miners at Lesser Mabmond and other nearby mining outposts, both the farmers and visiting miners might be of the roughest sort, they might not have bothered to pave either landing field or streets, so that he was all over dust before he’d even reached the town from the grounded ship’s boat, and, well, the place might stink … not the expected stink of a farming world, that of animal dung and human bodies not washed nearly often enough, but with a constant sort of rotten egg smell from the very world itself — but it did have the one thing Dansby currently longed for.

  A sky.

  Yes, it was more yellow than blue, and had a tendency to rain drops that would open a sore on man or beast not under shelter of something built from the dung-brown wood of the trees that had adapted here, but it was an open sky, with clouds that were … well, yellow, but that was better than the swirling black masses that permeated darkspace.

  And while the flowing stench might make one wish to gag, that was certainly better than being enclosed in burnt fluff that pressed in and crushed a man.

  Dansby took a deep breath and stretched, raising his face to look up at the heavens that, for a time, weren’t dripping anything caustic on him, though there was a dirty yellow cloud on the horizon that spoke of a need for cover later.

  Kaycie hadn’t wanted him out of her sight, but he’d pled the aftereffects of being adrift in darkspace and got some time alone.

  He understood her concern, but he felt the need for some time on-planet, with air, whatever its contents, all around him, and a relatively empty sky above.

  A few days away from vacuum and the Dark were all he needed to get his head back straight and put any fears of what might lay outside a hull behind him.

  A drink and some cards wouldn’t go amiss, either, and Upper Mabmond excelled at providing such things. Nearly every storefront off the landing field offered such entertainments, including the chandleries and assay offices. One could have a pint and play a few hands while one’s ore was being measured and never leave a single building.

  Judging by the ladies, and a few men, of scant dress along the buildings’ upper balconies, there were few places that missed the opportunity for other distractions as well.

  It was growing dark — as dark as two moons and the more distant star Lesser Mabmond allowed — and the lights from inside the establishments cast a friendly, welcoming light out into the street.

  Dansby chose one at random to enter — each was as good as the others to start, he supposed. Real funds were rather limited after he’d paid the crew, but they had a cache of gallenium bars that would keep them going for some time, once they found a fence to take the things.

  Gold would have moved easier, and done as much good at keeping the Dark out.

  He shuddered at the memories and looked around, judging the tables and players to find the —

  “Dark damn your eyes — I want my ten pounds!”

  Twenty-Three

  Chasing bloody Rabbit again, and not doing a very good job of it.

  Abed for a fortnight had left him weak and with no stamina to climb the ladders from Elizabeth’s hold to main deck without stopping for a rest, much less dash after maddingly quick thieves through Upper Mabmond’s alleyways.

  Ahead, Rabbit darted around a tower of boxes, reaching one hand up to lightly pull the whole lot just enough so that it started a topple that was still ongoing when Dansby arrived. He couldn’t even hurdle the things, had he retained the legs and wind to do so, for they were still falling.

  “Stop her! Thief!” he yelled — wheezed, he allowed. “I want my ten pounds, you little bint!”

  Boxes stopped enough to pick a path through them, he rushed on, catching sight of Rabbit making the turn at alley’s end to head for the landing field.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Dansby muttered.
>
  This wasn’t back on Greater Ashton, where he’d been a simple hand on Tyche — now he had Elizabeth back, and a full crew to go with her.

  He slowed to a jog, and kept Rabbit in sight while he pulled his tablet, and sent a recall message to everyone on-planet, and an order to prepare to get underway to Elizabeth.

  He was a hundred meters behind the girl as she reached the landing field, twice that as she dashed up her pinnace’s ramp, and threw her a gesture that was not the return of her jaunty, smiling wave as the ramp rose.

  Dansby wondered whether her partner was aboard or whether she’d abandon him on Upper Mabmond to escape — or whether he was some thrall she kept aboard ship, never allowing the man time for himself. Yes, that seemed quite the sort of thing Rabbit would do — using those damned wiles to trap a man in her bloody brambles.

  Well, he’d see about freeing the fellow as soon as he got his ten pounds back.

  “Quarter power on the drive!” Dansby ordered as the hatch opened between boat and ship. He rushed onto Elizabeth and headed straight for the quarterdeck, calling orders all the way.

  Less than half the boat crew followed him, but he’d messaged the others on the way to orbit and they’d be fine on Upper Mabmond until the ship returned for them.

  “Detheridge, hands to the hull and raise the masts! I want us in motion as soon as we transition to darkspace and not a moment lost!”

  “Aye, sir!”

  “Smithey, do you see that pinnace that lifted before us?” Dansby would have Smithey off the tactical console and playing pulley-hauley on the hull if he didn’t, for the pinnace was flashing red on Elizabeth’s navigation plot, having lifted from Upper Mabmond and blasted through the standard orbital paths like a bloody rocket.

  “Aye, sir! She’s heading for L1, it looks.”

  “Make for L1, Rosson,” Dansby told the helmsman, “and with as many niceties to those others in orbit as our quarry’s shown!”

  Rosson grinned, given leave to ignore the polite notice and changing from one orbit to another and simply make way. The merchantmen and recreating miners circling Upper Mabmond would squawk, and Elizabeth’s own icon would be flashing red on their plots, marked as a ship behaving badly and one to watch out for.