Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Box Set

by J. A. Sutherland

  “Aye, sir!”

  “Kaycie, to the guns. We’ll not fire until we’re in darkspace and not for effect at all, but I’ll want a shot or two close across her bow!”

  Kaycie cleared her throat. “And is there some particular reason we’re set to so obviously commit an act of piracy with …” She ostentatiously scanned the navigation plot. “… seven ships as witness to our chase?”

  Dansby paused, as did all those others on the quarterdeck.

  “She stole from me!”

  Kaycie raised an eyebrow. “The ship did?”

  “Well, no —”

  “Her captain, then?”

  “Well, captain’s a bit fancy for a pinnace, don’t you —”

  “So, the captain of that ship’s a woman?”

  “A snake!” Dansby insisted, wondering just what sort of hole Kaycie was digging for him, but unable, somehow, to help himself.

  “Of the female sort?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose, but it’s the matter of the ten pounds, see?”

  “Oh, I see,” Kaycie said. “You’re taken out of my sight and put aboard a bloody Navy ship with three hundred men and not a whiff of female to be found, but you somehow manage to find some slag to chase after.”

  “She’s not a —” Well, no, defending Rabbit, not in any way, wasn’t the way to go about this, even if it was his own taste he really was defending. No, that path led to the hole being a grave, rather than the sort one was simply in up to the neck while carrion birds pecked at one’s face. Better to have a chance at survival. “It’s not like that, there was a card game.”

  “You lost at cards? Jon —” Kaycie glanced around at the watching crew. “Avrel Dansby lost at cards? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.”

  “I didn’t — well, a bit, but not overall.”

  Kaycie nodded, as though something had been confirmed.

  “And then?”

  “Well, she’d won too, you see, and I needed a bit more, so I thought to run a bit of a line on her, and …” Dansby trailed off, not quite seeing how this trail led anywhere but a much deeper hole.

  “And she wound up taking ten pounds off you,” Kaycie nodded again. “I see.”

  “It was only eight,” Dansby said.

  That damnable eyebrow went up again. “And yet it’s ten. Are we in the business of usury now?”

  “No, I —”

  “So, the other two pounds?” Kaycie asked.

  Dansby looked down at the deck. “That was from the second time.”

  Even as the words left his mouth, Dansby realized how they sounded, but it was too late to call them back.

  “Second time?” Kaycie asked, voice chill as a body six months in vacuum.

  “No! The second time I only chased her for my eight pounds, and then, well, she’s a great bloody mountain of a partner, see? Put me out and went through my pockets.” He really wished he could shut up, as none of this was to his credit.

  “The second time you only chased her,” Kaycie said, and the chill deepened. Her voice was arctic. “Which says much of that first time, doesn’t it?”

  “I —” Dansby sighed, this was going to be the most expensive ten pounds he’d ever had, but now they were on to principles and the nearly laughing faces of the crew made him stand. “I want my ten pounds. We’re not taking the ship or any piracy, but will you lay the bloody guns or must I ask Sween to do it?”

  Kaycie’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I’ll lay the bloody guns on her, have no fear.” She leaned close and whispered. “And we’ll be speaking more of this, Jon Bartlett.”

  Dansby swallowed hard and opened his mouth to speak, but she was already at the quarterdeck hatch on her way to the guns.

  “Across the bow, right? Not —”

  The hatch closed.

  Whatever amusement the crew took at his burying, they at least had the decency to appear sober as he glared around the quarterdeck.

  “Aye, sir,” Smithey said, though Dansby’d given no further orders.

  Dansby went to the plot and studied it a moment.

  “Make for L5, Rosson,” he said.

  “Aye, sir.”

  Kaycie was right about one thing, they didn’t need to make it so obvious that Rabbit’s pinnace was their quarry. While she was headed for Lagrangian point one, that between Upper Mabmond and its largest moon, they’d head for L5 where ships more typically transitioned to darkspace when leaving a system. L4 in and L5 out were the norm, as those two offered the largest space in which to transition. L1 was closer to the planet, but smaller and so most merchants didn’t use it.

  Rabbit’s pinnace was so small in itself that the transition at L1 would be easy, no matter how poor a helmsman she or her partner were.

  Elizabeth’s transition at L5 would make for more of a chase once they were in darkspace, but wouldn’t make it so obvious to those others in orbit around Upper Mabmond that there was a chase to begin with.

  And, while Rabbit might be heartened, thinking her little ship might be the faster, she’d not seen what Elizabeth could do — Dansby had no doubt he could catch up any ship a’sail, even giving the little bint a head start.

  Twenty-Four

  “A point to windward and down five, Rosson,” Dansby said.

  “Aye, sir.”

  Elizabeth was very nearly in range of Rabbit’s pinnace, though it had been a merry chase. Whoever it was at the small craft’s helm, Rabbit or her erstwhile partner, had a trick or two of their own.

  The pinnace led Elizabeth nearly all the way around Upper Mabmond, through the circling winds between the Upper and Lower systems, and out the other side before Dansby managed to catch her up.

  “A shot across her bow, Smithey,” Dansby ordered, then paused. “And do stress across, if you please.”

  With Kaycie in command of the guns, he worried — there’d been an earlier shot that was a bit too close for even his comfort, but that hadn’t brought Rabbit to bay.

  “Aye, sir,” Smithey said with a grin.

  “Sween to the boarding hatch with some men, as well,” Dansby continued. “No more than a dozen, it’s a bloody pinnace, so we’ve no need to be jostling our own elbows when we go aboard her.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “And a word to Presgraves that we want the ship intact, so no bloody explosives.”

  “Always, sir.”

  Things aboard Elizabeth set, Dansby waited as the two ships closed more, then, “Hard a’port, Rosson, and, Smithey, I’ll have that shot across her —”

  Bolts of laser shot from Elizabeth’s side — her full broadside and not the single shot Dansby’d ordered. The laser shot condensed into visible bolts, seeming to flow through the odd environment of darkspace like short lines of light drawn on a jet-black page. They curved, as well, drawn from their path by whatever masses of dark matter lay between them and their target.

  “Bloody —”

  Whether by luck or the skill of Kaycie’s gunners, not a single shot struck home in the pinnace — instead bracketing the little ship on all sides and flowing off into the distance.

  “Signal to that pinnace, Milhouse — Heave-to and … yes, spell it out, I want my ten pounds!”

  The smaller ship came up into the winds, dousing the charge to her sails and letting them drop. No one was on the hull for that, the ship being so small it was made so that a single person could work it, even in darkspace, and, while there’d been a suited figure running about on the hull for most maneuvers, simply dropping all the sail to a clump around the yard could be done from inside.

  Dansby brought Elizabeth alongside, dousing and furling their own sails to come to rest mere meters away, a bit upwind so that Rabbit’s ship lay in his lee and Elizabeth, driven by what force of those winds could work against her gallenium embedded hull, would slowly drift even closer.

  “Extend the lock,” Dansby said, “and Sween to meet me there with an armed party.”

  “Aye, sir,” Grubbs said, passing the message
along.

  Dansby was already through the quarterdeck hatch and on the companionway ladder down to the next level, then made his way to the airlock where Sween and a dozen others, along with Kaycie, waited.

  “You’ve left the guns?” Dansby asked.

  “Oh, I’d not miss this for the world,” Kaycie said, then a bit too loudly and to far more snickers than Dansby’d like, “Miss a chance to see the girl who could take ten pounds off the great Avrel Dansby?”

  More grins and laughter met that, and Dansby began to wonder if the bloody ten pounds, principle or no, was worth it.

  Sween was at the airlock controls and extended the boarding tunnel, a long, flexible tube that attached itself to the pinnace, and began filling with air.

  “Pinnace’s airlock’s cycling,” Sween advised.

  Well, that would save them boarding and wondering what the other ship’s inhabitants had in store. If Rabbit was willing to come across to hand over the coin, he’d take it and they could be on their way. This wasn’t piracy, after all, merely getting his own back.

  “Prepare to receive our visitors, then,” Dansby said, and Sween put his dozen crew in a half circle around the airlock’s hatch.

  They were armed to varying degrees, a few with pistols, most with cutlasses as well, should there be fighting that got so close, and a few with stout cudgels of ships’ line braced with a length of thermoplastic hull material, in case a mere beating into submission were necessary.

  Presgraves was there as well, though Dansby would prefer the occasionally uncontrollable woman weren’t at the very front. She was armed with two cutlasses and ran their edges together with an unpleasant grating sound.

  Dansby took a place directly in front of the hatch, trying to set a stern look on his face — something suitably disappointed that might get Rabbit to hand over the ten bloody pounds and be on her way before Kaycie had any words with her. Kaycie took her own place at Dansby’s side. “You could, I suppose, take the quarterdeck,” he suggested. “This likely won’t take but a few moments for them to hand over the coin.”

  Kaycie nodded, a deceptively genial smile — one Dansby was, unfortunately, able to see through — on her face.

  “I think not,” she said.

  The far lock cycled and two vacsuited figures entered the boarding tube, then into Elizabeth’s lock and the outer hatch closed. To Dansby, it seemed to take an interminable amount of time for the lock to fill with air, all the while he could see Kaycie’s intent gaze focused on that inner hatch.

  I really must have a word or two with my principles, he thought. Perhaps with a pistol and fresh-dug trench to dump them in. Nothing but trouble, the bloody things.

  The inner hatch cycled and Rabbit stepped out of the airlock, vacsuit helmet unlatched and thrown back to hang behind her neck. She looked around at the gathered watchers with a wry, twisty grin. She was, Dansby thought, and despite the hours she must have been sweating in that vacsuit while working the pinnace away from Elizabeth, every bit as striking as he remembered.

  There was a chorus of “ohs” from the watchers, as though some questions had just been answered. Presgraves looked from Dansby to Rabbit and back again, then glanced at Kaycie and back at Dansby. She ran her blades together.

  “I see,” Kaycie said.

  Dansby felt his face grow hot and cleared his throat. “Welcome aboard Elizabeth,” he said. “I’ll take my ten bloody pounds now, and you can be on your way.”

  “Elizabeth?” Rabbit asked. “What’s that? Some wench you wished to, what was it you said, drill deep and set your charges?”

  Another chorus of “ohs” came from the watching crew and all eyes turned toward Kaycie.

  “I see,” Kaycie said, which sent the eyeballs to Dansby.

  “No,” Dansby said, trying to maintain his demeanor at the same time he dearly wished Kaycie had fired her broadside into that pinnace and made this particular scene impossible. “Elizabeth is named for my mother.”

  He hoped mention of that might cool things — thoughts of parents always did seem to. Though the thought now occurred to him — what would a lass do to have a ship named after her? That had possibilities. There were any number of things he thought he might like to try that Kaycie simply responded to with a laugh and if —

  Kaycie cleared her throat and he glanced that way. The expression might be bemused and the raised eyebrow even amused, but underneath was a hardness that told Dansby he’d not be getting to try any of the things that even weren’t right-out any time soon with her.

  Dansby looked around at the gathered crew and Kaycie. “You should all know,” he said, pointing at Rabbit, “that this woman is a thief, and a grifter, and not to be trusted —”

  “Fit in proper, then?” Detheridge asked.

  “— and I want my ten bloody pounds!”

  There was a rustling from the airlock and Dansby looked that way, reminded now that Rabbit had a partner he’d forgotten about in her appearance.

  A young man no more than Dansby’s age exited the lock to stand behind Rabbit, overshadowing her by nearly thirty centimeters. He had long black hair and a full beard — a beard that would do proper credit to a man twice his age. He laid a hand on Rabbit’s shoulder and the black of his beard broke into a white-toothed grin.

  “Ah, lad,” he said, “why’re y’speakin’ so about this Dark-born angel that’s no other than Young Blackbourne’s own baby sister, now?”

  The mood in Dansby’s cabin, around the dinner table that doubled as a repeater of the quarterdeck’s navigation plot, was, not to put too fine a point on it, best described as icy.

  He, Kaycie, Rabbit, and Rabbit’s partner and apparently brother, seated themselves while Detheridge brought out a mediocre bottle of wine from Dansby’s stores — and why Elizabeth’s bosun was doing the serving herself, instead of delegating one of the crew, likely had to do with how eagerly she cocked her head from the door to Dansby’s pantry as the conversation began.

  “I don’t have your ten pounds, as I said,” Rabbit insisted. “All our funds went into cargo back on Upper Mabmond, before you chased us off.”

  “I find it hard to believe you’ve not kept such a paltry sum in reserve,” Dansby said. “Nor that you’re running cargoes in a ship so small.”

  “And I,” Rabbit said, “find it difficult to believe you’ve chased us half across the sector for ten bloody pounds — nor how it is you have a ship. You were a Navy man when we —” She gave Kaycie a sweet smile. “— met.”

  “Look,” Dansby said, hoping to defuse the situation, “what am I to call you, anyway?”

  He couldn’t go on calling the girl Rabbit, after all, certainly not out loud where Kaycie would hear.

  “That’s right,” Rabbit said with another smile for Kaycie, “you never got my name when we … met.”

  “I see,” Kaycie said.

  Bugger me, but I’ll never get this right.

  “Allie Blackbourne,” Rabbit said.

  “Allie?” Dansby asked. It was the natural reaction to being given a diminutive, but he saw from Kaycie’s look and narrowed eyes that it showed far more interest than he should have in anything but his ten pounds.

  “Alfonsine and Tristian Blackbourne,” Rabbit’s brother put in, “would be what the parents named their twins, and the saddling of said babes with such a burdensome naming would go far toward the explaining o’this pair’s lot in life.”

  “Twins?” Dansby asked, looking from the diminutive, delicate Rabbit to her giant, coarse, ostensible brother.

  “So I’m told,” Rabbit, Allie Blackbourne, said.

  Kaycie sighed. “If we might finish up about the ten pounds so that we might all be on our ways?” She narrowed her eyes at Dansby again. “Separate ways, that is.”

  “Well, and didn’t Young Blackbourne’s lil’ sis give you sooth?” Rabbit’s brother asked. “We’ve nary sixpence in coin to carry, save when we sell our cargo.”

  “Nonsense,” Dansby said. “Sh
e was at a bloody card table when I saw her and must’ve had more than that to play — moreover, I’ve seen her play and she likely had half the coin in that room.”

  “Which I was forced to leave behind when someone stormed in shouting like a child about ten bloody pounds and chased me out the back,” Allie said.

  “My crew’s searching your ship as we speak,” Dansby said, “if you’ve some cache hidden away, they’ll find it.”

  Allie laughed. “If I’ve aught hidden aboard my ship, no search of yours will ever find it.”

  Dansby frowned, more certain than ever now that there was a cache of some value aboard that ship.

  “Then I’ll take it out of your bloody cargo!” Dansby said, starting to grow a bit wroth with the girl’s smugness.

  “Ah, lad,” Allie’s brother said, “an’ Young Blackbourne’d take the don’t on yer finding that, as well.”

  Allie gave her brother a look. “Or,” she stressed, “we were chased off Upper Mabmond before we loaded it, so there’s nothing to find.”

  Blackbourne squinted at her for a moment, then looked to Dansby. “Aye, that’d be the way of it. Y’fair chased the twins off a’fore they loaded cargo, so nothing to find, you.”

  Allie sighed.

  “What? You’ve hidden your cargo as well?” Dansby asked. Well, of course they had, cardsharps and grifters, the pair of them, so why not other bits. Dansby glared at the two. “You’re smugglers!” he accused.

  Both Kaycie and Detheridge cleared their throats, but Dansby ignored them. There was smuggling and smuggling, as he’d seen aboard Tyche and he suspected this pair were involved in the sort he didn’t care for.

  “What are you carrying?” Dansby pressed on. He’d just put a stop to one bit of drug smuggling aboard Tyche, only to have another drop into his lap? The pair’s bloody pinnace wasn’t so large that other cargoes would carry much profit — had to be something small and of great value for its size to make the carriage at all worthwhile.