He looked closer, tracing the rat’s nest of wire.
Well, that’s odd.
Two wires left the block of circuit boards and ran down a corner of the cabinet’s insides, then through a small hole in the deck.
The decking here was square plates over a frame, so that there was wiring run beneath. His crew had pulled those up and peered below for any sign of a cargo, but found none. Still, those wires were odd.
He grasped the tab for one of the deck plates nearest where the wires disappeared and pulled it up. Just a few centimeters of space, filled with the wiring he’d expect — power runs from the fusion plant, fiber from the ship’s external optics, control runs to the rudder and plane. Nothing out of the ordinary until he felt around to grasp the two he was concerned with and followed their run to the other console.
That console was working, but appeared to have not been opened in some time until his crew arrived. The marks of their pulling its panel off were clear in ages of dust and grime.
Dansby unscrewed its bolts and pulled the panel aside.
Dust and grime were, he’d discovered, easy enough for one to put in place. He’d painted the access to more than one of Elizabeth’s hidey-holes with the patina of disuse himself.
The panel came free and the inside was a greater rat’s nest than the first, its space filled with circuit boards, hanging wires, and what appeared to be decades of jury-rigged repairs and additions. One circuit board hung precariously in the center of the opening, stacked atop no fewer than five adapters to make it fit and work with the original components.
The circuits and wires made nearly a solid wall. Dansby could reach inside, but only a few centimeters before he was blocked by more, and he’d have to disassemble the entire mess, with who knew what laying farther inside — and no guarantee he could put the thing back together in any sort of working fashion after.
This was exactly what one would expect of a ship owned by two dirt-scratching reprobates sailing the Fringe and making what repairs they might from what components were available on hundreds of different worlds — and just the sort of thing a revenue officer would leave be, fearing the reports necessary if his search left the ship inoperable and he had to tow the bloody thing into some Admiralty port to have it put right.
The thing was —
Dansby withdrew his hand from the mess and touched, delicately at first, then with more determination, chip after chip on board after board.
Cold as stone.
“Oh, you’re a clever one, Rabbit,” he murmured.
Give the searchers a perfect hidey-hole to find empty in the disused console, then this — he grinned — this bramble patch to keep them at bay.
He grasped two clumps of wiring and pulled the whole mass — first up, then down, then side to side, until he got it right. It wouldn’t need to be too complicated, after all, as no one would ever touch the thing for fear of it never working again.
To the left there was a satisfying click, felt more than heard, and the whole mass shifted, then it eased down a bit, and the top came toward him, so that the whole block that filled the opening came out as one piece.
“All right, Rabbit,” he whispered, “let’s see what bits of nastiness you’re trafficking.”
Dansby shined his light inside, seeing first the two wires from the “inoperable” console running up to this one’s top, then, farther back, the distinctive cream and purple of raw gallenium.
Twenty-Seven
The number of gallenium bricks was not so very large, Dansby thought. He’d stacked them on the table in his quarters, five high and four wide, so that they formed a near perfect cube, save for the two extra laid atop. The ore itself was still somewhat raw, being only the miners’ first refinement, and not yet ready to be ships’ hulls or shot canisters just yet.
Perhaps a quarter its weight in true gallenium, once refined further.
Still a goodly sum, and twice the number of bars he’d managed to retrieve from his own cache taken from Tyche.
“I almost believe their tale of poverty,” Dansby told Kaycie. “To have purchased this much, even from the miners directly, must have taken all their ready coin.”
“A dangerous business, though,” Kaycie said.
Dansby nodded. Their own bars felt like a sword poised above his neck, only waiting for their discovery to let go and cleave him in two. The deliberate trade in smuggled gallenium, rather than Dansby’s own having liberated the stuff from others less originally scrupulous than himself, was a hard choice, the buyers being mostly foreign nations, no matter who fronted them. That, and the Crown’s monopoly on the trade, made Rabbit, Allie, and her brother, guilty of treason if they were found out.
“A profitable business, though,” Dansby added.
Those bars would likely sell for twice what the Blackbournes had paid, and a doubling of so much coin was a great deal indeed.
There was a rap at the cabin door.
“Come through,” Dansby called.
Detheridge slid the hatch open and ushered the two Blackbournes inside, a pair of armed spacers at their back.
Both Allie’s and Blackbourne’s eyes went to the table and the stack of metal bars on it.
Dansby could almost see the sinking feeling fill them both.
Blackbourne took a deep breath, licked his lips, and pointed at the cube of metal.
“Young Blackbourne can explain that, he can.”
“So,” Dansby said as Detheridge moved the pair closer to the table, “it’s smuggling, is it? And very nearly the worst of that.” He’d discussed it with Kaycie and decided he oughtn’t show his own true hand too soon.
“Well, now, an’ it’s not entirely what yer so obviously thinking, lad,” Blackbourne said, taking his seat and smiling again, though the grin looked a bit weaker.
“Really?” Kaycie asked. She pursed her lips. “Because it looks remarkably like a capital offense for the two of you and a ten-percent reward on this metal from the Crown for us.” She fixed her gaze on Allie. “Though I, for one, will forgo the latter if I might be present for the former.”
Dansby cleared his throat. While he and Kaycie might have resolved, to a certain extent, their own misunderstanding, it was clear she didn’t feel the same about Rabbit.
“Well, now, if you’d cease your talk o’ offenses for the moment let Young Blackbourne explain a thing,” Blackbourne said, “see, it weren’t —” His mouth worked silently. “It were more like —” He took a deep breath and exhaled. “There were a certain —” He sighed. “Ah, bugger.”
“Seems a bit extreme, don’t you think?” Allie asked. “We’ve gone from ten pounds owed to talk of hanging and taking our entire cargo.”
Dansby spread his hands. “The road leads where it leads, I suppose. I’d have been happy with the ten pounds.”
Kaycie’s smile widened. “Well, I’m quite happy where things have gone — noose and all.”
Blackbourne leaned toward her, grinning once more himself. “Ah, lass, now Young Blackbourne will admit his dear sister can be a bit —”
“Of a slag?” Kaycie asked.
“Was gonna say ‘indiscriminate,’ Young Blackbourne was. Discerning in her choice of men, as it were.”
“Lacking in refinement, you might say?” Kaycie asked.
“Of judgment, aye,” Blackbourne said.
Kaycie cast Dansby a glance devoid of any sign of their previous making-up. “I’ll allow her that.”
“I’m right here,” Dansby said.
“As am I,” Allie added. She looked from Kaycie to Dansby, then back again. “What do you want?”
“I’m curious,” Dansby said, “as to what you planned to do with this.” He waved his hand at the cube of gallenium. “It’s not the easiest to dispose of, I hear.”
“Ah, now, it’d be foolish to take on such a cargo without knowing a man, wouldn’t it?” Blackbourne asked.
“Indeed,” Dansby said. “So you do have a buyer? A sure and safe b
uyer?”
“Aye,” Blackbourne said.
“Who might that be?” Kaycie asked.
“Ah,” Blackbourne said, “it’s —”
“Wait.” Allie grasped her brother’s forearm. “They have our ship and our cargo — tell them where to sell it and they have no further use of us.”
“Do you think we’d simply kill you?” Kaycie asked.
“I don’t know,” Allie said. She nodded at Dansby but kept her eyes on Kaycie. “I appear to have misjudged him once already, and he’s a far clearer read than you are.”
“Fair enough,” Kaycie said.
“Still right here,” Dansby said, feeling the very last thing in the world he should allow is for Rabbit and Kaycie to join forces against him.
“For the moment,” Kaycie said. “Perhaps I ought to replace you with Mister Blackbourne.”
“Ah, now, lass, that would be a treat,” Blackbourne said.
“Indeed.” Kaycie smiled, which turned decidedly unfriendly when she glanced at Dansby. “A man who knows value, you —”
“— for you,” Blackbourne continued, “for Young Blackbourne’s twenty-first digit’s known far and wide as a wondrous treat.”
Blackbourne’s own grin didn’t change as Kaycie turned her icy stare on him.
“It’s really not, you know,” Allie whispered to Dansby, holding up a pinkie. “We were children together, after all.”
“Things change, sister,” Blackbourne said, with a wink to Kaycie. “Far and wide, lass, far and wide.”
Dansby cleared his throat, wondering just how the conversation had gone from hanging Rabbit and Blackbourne, a thing he was now thinking a distinct improvement, to the man flirting so with Kaycie and discussion of his “twenty-first digit”.
“Your contact for the sale of this,” Dansby asked, taking in the cube of gallenium and hoping to get the discussion back to pence and pounds, rather than Blackbourne and Kaycie. “He’s reliable?”
“As the deck beneath your feet, lad,” Blackbourne said, then looked around the compartment. “Well, the Blackbourne twins’ deck, more, as there’s no telling what you’ve done with this ship.”
“Elizabeth out-sailed you, you —”
“Yes,” Kaycie said, “let’s to real business and enough of your bantering.”
Allie sighed. “Fifteen percent of the sale price. We’ll cut you in on the deal and you’ll take more than the ten percent the Crown would give you for turning us in — keeping in mind that we might as well say we’ve never seen the gallenium before and it was you who had it aboard, taking our ship so as to have a patsy to blame and simply collect the reward.” She shrugged. “Faced with that, some Fringe magistrate is as like to set nooses for the lot of us and keep the ten percent for himself.”
Dansby nodded — there was that risk in trying to turn the pair in.
Well, that risk and that we’ve nearly half as much gallenium to dispose of ourselves.
That wouldn’t be an easy thing to explain, were Elizabeth searched as part of some magistrate’s investigation into the Blackbournes’ counter-accusations.
He shared a look with Kaycie who nodded agreement — they’d already discussed what deal they might make with the pair, provided they seemed … well, if not trustworthy, then of reasonably predictable goals.
“I’ll make you a counter-offer,” Dansby said.
“We’ll not go above twenty-percent,” Allie said. “There’s no profit and not enough coin left for us to buy further cargoes at more than that — might as well take our chances with the magistrate.”
Dansby held up one hand. “We’ll take my ten pounds,” he said, there being no way he was going to let the pair off without repaying him that. He raised his other hand from below the table with a pair of Elizabeth’s own gallenium bars and set those on the table. “And an introduction to your buyer.”
Allie stared at the bars for a moment, then her brother laughed — a deep, hearty sound that filled the room and overrode her own softer chuckle.
“It seems I misjudged you,” Allie said. “Again.” She set her forearms on the table and leaned toward Dansby, much as her brother had toward Kaycie earlier.
For Dansby’s part, he rather more appreciated what such a position did for Rabbit’s chest than her brother’s.
Kaycie’s blow to the side of his head was not unexpected.
Twenty-Eight
“The bloody Barbary?” Dansby asked. “Really?”
Allie Blackbourne shrugged. “That’s where our contact will meet us.”
Dansby sighed. He’d hoped, after his last experience in the Barbary Worlds — what with finding himself aboard a secret slave-trading vessel of the Marchant Company, taking the ship by mutiny, and one of the slaving pirates’ ships — that it would be, well, his last bloody experience in the Barbary.
Such was not to be the case if the Blackbournes were telling the truth and their contact who’d purchase the gallenium was meeting them there.
“It’s where our contact will meet us,” Allie repeated.
“We couldn’t just sail into his shipyard and be done with it? It’s not as though the cargo’s so very difficult to unload, after all.”
“He wishes to meet outside of the kingdom’s space,” Allie said. “It’s safer that way.”
“A name would be helpful,” Kaycie said.
“Ah, lass, and then what need would you have of Young Blackbourne, knowing all his secrets and such?” Blackbourne asked. “Save yer growing desire t’know the truth and acquaintance o’his Adam Halfpint, o’course.”
“My brother’s never-ending obsession with his nether-parts aside,” Allie said, “we will keep our —”
“Not just Young Blackbourne’s,” Blackbourne said. “There’s a fair passle o’ladies with just that fascination.”
“Yes,” Kaycie said. “A growing fanbase, I’ve no doubt.” She turned to Allie. “I do take your point. Your contact is yours for your future trading; but you must take our point as well, we’re sailing blind here.”
Allie shrugged. “You’ll meet him soon enough.”
“Sail, ho!” Smithey called from the tactical console.
The report wasn’t strictly necessary, as Elizabeth’s navigation plot had placed a marker for the new contact as soon as the ship’s optics detected the light of its sails, which would have been at the same time Smithey’s tactical console told him of it. But some things were tradition amongst spacers, carried forward from when the first of them left the trackless seas of humanity’s homeworld for the boundless expanse of darkspace.
“Clear for action,” Dansby ordered. There was no reason to believe their rendezvous would turn violent, but no reason, either, to be confidant it wouldn’t.
Elizabeth, for all Dansby’s desire to be shut of the Barbary, had been designed by his mother for this very region's trade — or, rather, through the region to trade with Hso-hsi on the far side. She was, Dansby thought, the perfect mix of speed and armament, though a merchant and not a naval ship. Short of some nation’s warship, what she couldn’t out sail she could outfight, and he was confident in that, even without knowing exactly what sort of ship awaited them.
“The Blackbournes to be escorted from their cabin to the quarterdeck,” he went on, even as the bustle of clearing the ship for action and manning the guns began.
Those two would be needed to exchange signals with the other ship, once they were within range to make out more than a fuzzy spot of light from the ship’s optics. They’d been given the first mate’s cabin — which was Kaycie’s, and he’d hoped that would have her moving into the master’s cabin with him, but she’d simply displaced Detheridge from her bosun’s cabin and shifted everyone else not on the common berthing deck down a slot.
They still had the Blackbournes’ pinnace attached like some seagoing lamprey to Elizabeth’s side and he could have berthed the pair there, but he wasn’t confident they’d found all of the twin’s tricks and traps aboard the little
ship, so he was more comfortable with them under guard.
It had been a cold and lonely number of nights for Dansby in the master’s cabin in the meantime, as though Allie Blackbourne’s proximity were a constant reminder to Kaycie of Dansby’s inherent faults.
It likely doesn’t help that I’ve dined them in each night, but what am I to do? I so typically dine with Kaycie and Detheridge that there’s no meal at all served in the wardroom.
The Blackbournes were ushered onto the quarterdeck a few moments before Kaycie arrived, they came straight to the navigation plot.
Blackbourne squinted at the plot. “Those’re good optics y’ve got.”
Dansby nodded, though he probably should have waited to bring these two to the quarterdeck and not shown them just how good Elizabeth’s optics were. The ship had been built with the very best of everything, the pride of the Bartlett fleet before the Marchants had destroyed his family and taken their assets.
Regardless, he still didn’t trust the Blackbournes, as they likely didn’t him, so he shouldn’t have exposed such a secret to them. He’d kept hidden Elizabeth’s true speed on the way here, holding her back and furling sail, despite his desire to be rid of both the twins and their combined cache of gallenium.
Kaycie arrived in the midst of Blackbourne’s comment and the look she shot him told Dansby she was wondering why he’d let them see that as well. In response, he simply shrugged — they were simply the best available, after all, and not as though any number of ships might not equip them if the owners were willing to spend the coin.
“Twenty minutes’ time a’fore we’re in signals range,” Grubbs said from the signals console.
“Is this your contact?” Dansby asked the Blackbournes.
“He’s in the right place,” Allie said. “We’ll know soon enough.”
The twenty minutes’ time was tense on the quarterdeck, both for wondering if the ship ahead of them was the one they were searching for, or some Barbary tough lying in wait, and with both Kaycie and Allie in close proximity on the quarterdeck, with nothing for the two to do save edge closer or away from Dansby in some sort of female dance of possession and aggression Dansby didn’t fully understand.
Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Box Set Page 30
