Tantamount

by Thomas J. Radford

  “There is more,” Piper said.

  Nel braced herself. “Show me.”

  Piper took her deeper into the hold, near the prow where the planks of the ship curved in. Driven through those curves was a massive log. Piper couldn't have put his arms around it if he'd tried. It appeared to be part of a mast, with rigging and hawsers still attached. Probably it was the other half of the mast she'd seen when out in the bubble.

  “Hells,” Nel said anyway. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Somewhere out there is a ship without a mast,” Piper confirmed sagely. “Here there is a mast without a ship and we have one more mast than the ship needs. Too many masts is not a good thing, Bandit thinks.”

  “Can we fly with that thing sticking out of us? Will it just do more damage?”

  Piper hesitated. “Fly yes, but Bandit says we should be stopping soon. Stop soon, fix ship. Sooner is better.”

  “I asked you, not that overgrown swamp rat,” Nel snapped.

  “You will hurt Bandit's feelings,” Piper said sternly. “Bandit knows this ship, every nook and cranny. The ship is hurt. Fix her soon, or she will not be flying. Bandit knows.”

  “Fine,” Nel waved a hand wearily. “We need to make some repairs. Can we do that here? Or while we sail?”

  Piper glanced questioningly at the loompa. Nel made a sound of disgust. Their ship was impaled. She trusted Piper's knowledge on the matter, in spite of the loompa obsession, but she didn't really need to hear it. Her ship was hurt and hurt bad. So was he really going to ask the damned rodent's opinion on that?

  It turned out he was.

  “No,” Piper said firmly. “We cannot. We can patch and sew, perhaps, but fix? No, we cannot fix. The ship must be set down, big repairs. This will take a while.”

  “And cost a fortune,” Nel sighed, running a hand through her hair, tugging a red strand in front of her eyes. It was getting long again, almost down to her shoulders. One more thing to attend to.

  “How far can we get with the ship like this?” she asked. “Your opinion, Piper. If that swamp rat says anything else I'm going to hang him over the side as bait.”

  Bandit squawked in alarm and took off into the rafters. Nel watched him go, surprised but satisfied at the same time.

  “Is a good thing Bandit likes you,” Piper said crossly. “Anyone else would get bitten.”

  “Piper, how long can the damned ship fly?”

  “A week, maybe more, maybe less. But not much. The ship needs fixing.”

  “A week, fine,” Nel said. “We'll set down. Has to be somewhere nearby we can go. Do what you can down here, Piper, grab whoever you need. Get Jack to help you with the heavy stuff, at least.”

  She looked up the loompa still cowering in the rafters. “And when we get to wherever we're going, we're getting rid of some excess ballast, you understand?”

  Piper glanced up. “Bandit hopes you are not talking about him.”

  “Bandit can hope all he likes. Just fix the ship, Piper.”

  “We will do what we can, Skipper.”

  “Someone want to explain how in the hells this happened?” Nel folded her arms in disgust.

  Quill and Gabbi stood ill at ease in front of the tribunal of two. Nel and Horatio had sequestered them on the bridge, away from the prying eyes of the rest of the crew. Violet had taken Sharpe to find somewhere to hang a spare hammock, with orders from Nel to make sure it wasn't too private. She still couldn't put a finger on the source of her unease but with a ship full of holes she wouldn't lose sleep over caution.

  Now her feelings were leaning towards angry. She wanted an explanation from Quill as to why he hadn't been on the bridge and another from both him and Gabbi as to why they'd been firing cutlery into her room.

  “I've just been down to the hold,” Nel said. “Piper showed me what's left of the mast of that ship out there. The Tantamount's been skewered like a harvest festival pig. How the hells did that happen?”

  Quill and Gabbi were chastised into silence for perhaps a heartbeat before both of them burst out talking. Talking quickly escalated into shouting, then degenerated into abusive name-calling as the two stopped trying to explain themselves and turned on each other.

  “. . . psychotic lizard-freak!”

  “Incompetent scullery wench!”

  “. . . of all the . . . ! You ungrateful snake-skinned bigot!”

  “Grateful?! You tried . . .”

  “. . . half a mind to . . .”

  “. . . poison me! Repulsive gluttonous meat bag . . .”

  “I'll turn you into a meat bag!”

  Sparks were on the verge of flying again, thaumatic ones. The very air was alive and crackling, blue arcs of free-flowing energy writhing between them and coiling around clenched fists. Quill's tail lashed, Gabbi stamped her foot, and the deck creaked. Nel stepped in at that point.

  “Enough, both of you!” she yelled. “One more move out of either of you and I'll have you scraping fungus off the underside of the hull.”

  Nel glared at both of them until they quieted down, though both still simmered angrily.

  “One at a time, if you please,” Horatio suggested. “Mister Quill, why weren't you at your post tonight?”

  “I was until she poisoned me!” Quill pointed an accusing finger at Gabbi.

  “I never!” Gabbi retorted. “Don't be blaming me if your slimy stomach is giving you problems.”

  “Gabbi, please.” Horatio held up a hand. “You'll get your chance. Quill, go on.”

  The Kelpie navigator might have smirked; it was hard to read his cold blooded features. “I took my evening meal before I started my watch. Two bells later I was face down in the head. It was her cooking; it couldn't have been anything else.”

  “It was the same slop as you eat every night, Loveland,” Gabbi retorted, emphasising the first name he detested so much. “Damned Kelpies and your bland cuisine. It was raw meat, minced! There's no way to screw it up.”

  “Then you put something in it.” Quill glared down at the diminutive cook.

  “Get in my face and say that!” Gabbi glared back up at him.

  “You see?” Quill appealed to his captain. “When I went to confront her about it she attacked me.”

  “He started it,” Gabbi countered.

  “Either of you starts anything more and I'll be the one to finish it,” Nel warned them. “You could have damaged the ship, to say nothing of the dereliction of duty.”

  “Easy, Nel,” Horatio said with a pained expression. “This isn't an Alliance ship, we don't flog our crew.”

  “Maybe we should start,” she suggested darkly.

  “Humans,” Quill muttered.

  “Damned Kelpie,” Gabbi matched him tone for tone.

  “All right, that really is quite enough, all of you,” the captain said. “Gabbi, do a check of our stores, make sure we haven't taken on anything bad and that nothing's spoiled since we left port. It sounds like we'll be making an unscheduled stopover soon anyway.”

  “Where?” Quill asked quickly.

  “Excuse me?” Horatio blinked.

  “Where are we stopping over?” Quill repeated his question. “I'm still the navigator. Where am I navigating to?”

  Nel spread out a star chart over the map table. Originally they'd been on a cargo run, a simple and legitimate expedition for an independent ship like theirs. They were still several weeks from their intended destination. With luck they'd be able to make up the time later but now they needed a stopover. Somewhere close, accessible, and, if Nel was being honest with herself, someplace that wouldn't ask too many questions.

  The choices were limited.

  Quill came over and gave the charts a critical looking over. Knowing the charts as well as he did, he didn't have to contemplate long before coming to a conclusion.

  “Cauldron,” he pronounced. “It's the only place anywhere near that might have what we need.”

  Nel pursed her lips. She agreed but had been searc
hing hard for an alternative. The problem being there wasn't one.

  Horatio came up, squinting at the map unhappily.

  “What about Settler's Landing?” he suggested.

  “Too much of a backwater,” Nel said heavily.

  “Gateway.” Horatio pointed to a spot on the map, back the way they'd come.

  “An Alliance port,” Quill reminded him. “The last one before we hit the High Lanes and tolled space.”

  Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Within the High Lanes, Alliance patrols provided security but, between the tolls and the competition that safety engendered, it was hard for a ship like the Tantamount to scrounge out a living.

  The Alliance, being the loose collection of disparate parties that it was, had come about more or less by an accident of mutual interest. It was badly managed and over bureaucratised, with different groups often ending up competing against one another. The worst, as far as Nel was concerned, were the trading companies, some of which bordered on being nations unto themselves.

  “Tamil?” She could hear the wistfulness in Horatio's voice.

  “Too small, Captain,” Nel said. “We took a lot of damage out there, sir. Rope, sails, timber, maybe stores. We need some place with all of that and we need it cheap. We'll be lucky to break even on this run now.”

  Horatio grimaced at the mention of money. Nel's suspicions started again.

  “It'll have to be Cauldron.” She rolled up the chart when the captain didn't add anything else, ending the conversation. “Figure two or three days at a safe speed?”

  “About that, yes.” Quill took the proffered chart from her.

  “Well, get to it, navigator,” she said. “And when I say safe I mean safe. We have a damned mast sticking out the wrong side of the ship.”

  Gabbi and Quill left to attend to their duties. When they were alone, Nel said to Horatio, “Captain, tell me we don't have debts waiting for us on Cauldron.”

  “A rigged game,” Horatio assured her all too quickly. “It'll never stand up.”

  “It will on Cauldron.” Nel folded her arms. “You're going to tell me you weren't cheating yourself?”

  “Nel,” the captain scowled. “You're fussing.”

  It's my job, Nel thought. “Captain . . .”

  “Don't worry about it, Nel,” her captain assured her. “It's a small debt, trifling really. Likely we won't even run into the creditors in any case.”

  “Let's hope so, sir,” Nel said neutrally. “About our passenger, now.”

  “What about him?”

  “I think he should get off at Cauldron.”

  Horatio frowned. “Do you?”

  “Yes,” Nel said firmly. “There's something not right about him.”

  “Not right how?”

  “He's too calm for one,” Nel stated. “No one who's been through what he has should be that relaxed. It's like he was just waiting for us to come along and rescue him.”

  “Seemed a reasonable sort to me, Nel.”

  “Did he now?” Nel asked suspiciously.

  “Indeed,” Horatio nodded. “We had a chat, him and I, after you left.”

  “Really, Captain.” Nel bit down on her lower lip. “About what?”

  “All sorts, Nel, all sorts. I rather like him actually. In fact, I think you're just letting your prejudices get in the way.”

  “My prejudices?” Nel exclaimed.

  “Because he was on an Alliance ship,” Horatio said. “You can take the girl out of the service but—”

  “Captain,” Nel interrupted.

  “Well, service left its mark on you, you can't deny that. In any case, Sharpe told us he wasn't part of the Alliance. Didn't you ever carry non-service personnel?”

  “None I'd want on this ship,” Nel said pointedly.

  “Hardly a reason to abandon him on Cauldron though. Terrible place, Cauldron, awful. Can't believe I'm going there myself, ourselves, I mean all of us. Together.”

  “What else are we supposed to do with him then?” Nel asked. “He was on his way to Thatch, that's weeks out of our way. You want to take him all the way to the drop off on Vice with the rest of our cargo?”

  “There's plenty of places we could let him off along the way, Nel.”

  “Cauldron is the first such place, sir.”

  “We'll talk about it,” Horatio said, which meant that they wouldn't. “We have a couple of days before we arrive, in any case.”

  Nel sighed. The conversation was taking on an all too familiar pattern. Horatio was a soft touch for strays, always had been. If she wasn't careful, or pushed this too much, she'd end up with another misfit crew member on her roster. The best she could say about Sharpe so far was that he was human and that didn't mean much.

  “I hope you do, sir,” she said. “Think about it, that is. And try and remember that creditor's name while you're at it.”

  “You know I hate to think about those sorts of things, Nel,” the captain dismissed her concerns.

  “I know, sir. That's why you have me.”

  The first thing Nel did after she left the captain was go back below deck to check on their cargo. She'd been too concerned about the state of the ship itself to pay it any mind when she'd been down before. The captain, and by extension the crew, was already going to be out of pocket fixing the ship. If they forfeited on this run because of damaged goods, they might find themselves patching the ship only to hand it over to their creditors.

  Sharpe was standing by one of the breaches in the hull, deep in the belly of the Tantamount where the heavier cargo was stored during flight. That cargo came down from above, hoisted via cranes into the hold. During flight the gap was covered by a wooden mesh, a criss-crossed lattice of timber that let very little light in. Light above deck was provided by glowstones, a gemlike substance that only lit up in the midst of the void, surrounded by all that nothing. They had to be close to that open airless void to glow, to the miasma, so they were less effective inside cabins and below decks. The glowstones put out a silvery hue, like white light in that it provided both visibility and a degree of colour, but left everything tinged with shade, looking faded.

  Sharpe, on the other hand, was carrying one of the ship's oil lamps, the flickering of which cast both him and the hold in inconsistent, twitching shadows. He had his back to Nel, but turned at her approach.

  “What are you doing down here?” Nel asked him, keeping her eyes averted from the oil lamp. Down here in the dark it was overly bright, almost painful to the eyes.

  Sharpe gestured to the jagged hole behind him. “Heard you took some damage,” he said. “Wanted to see for myself.”

  “That so? Look like something you can fix then?”

  Sharpe frowned. “Not really my speciality, Skipper.”

  “Then why bother looking?”

  “Because if the ship I'm on is full of holes, I want to know how bad it is.”

  “My ship, my problem,” Nel said. “But since we've come to it, what is your speciality?”

  Sharpe shrugged, then turned at the sound of something skittering along wood. A quick-fire scrapping and scratching sign and then a fist-sized shadow shot between two crates, a larger clutch of darkness in hot pursuit.

  “The hells was that?” Sharpe lifted the lantern higher.

  “Bandit.” Nel made a face.

  Sharpe rocked back on his heels, swaying. “Part of your crew?”

  “Not if ever I catch him,” Nel muttered.

  “Looked like he was trying to do the catching. Every ship needs a rat-catcher. Didn't look much like a cat though,” Sharpe observed.

  “Loompa.”

  “That's different.” Sharpe mused. “Didn't know loompa were carnivorous. You sure he eats what he catches?”

  “—don't care if it walks off the plank after them. I want him off my ship.”

  The skipper's voice carried to Violet as she descended the stairs into the hold, cradling a steaming bowl of soup between her hands. She hadn't bothered with a
light; the hold was easy enough to navigate though she knew some of the crew had trouble. She followed the sound of the skipper's voice, pausing when a small bodied form ran up to her out of the shadows.

  “Don't be letting the skipper see you, Bandit,” Violet whispered. “She'll break out that plank like she's been threatening.”

  The loompa peered up at her with big eyes. A garbled sound emerged from his throat, muffled by the limp form of his latest catch. He scurried off into the depths of the hold again, presumably to devour his prize. Violet was just glad she'd never had to clean up whatever he didn't finish eating.

  Holding the soup out in front of her, Violet made her way towards the sound of voices. Rounding a stack of crates, she found herself staring down a bright, angry red glare. She squeezed her eyes down to the barest slits, trying to hold still and not spill the soup.

  “Skipper?” Violet called out uncertainly. “That you?”

  “What is it, Vi?” The skipper's voice came from behind the glare.

  “Nothing, Skipper.” Violet felt her tail going into a slow, nervous spin behind her. “Wasn't even looking for you. Gabbi thought Mister Sharpe might like something to eat. Thought he was down here with you.”

  “It's just Sharpe,” she heard the man they'd rescued say. The light, a lantern, dimmed. She could make out Sharpe and the skipper, though she had blotches in her vision. “No mister. You say mister I'm gonna start looking around for my old man and none of us wants that fellow here. So just Sharpe, or Castor.”

  “I got some soup here, Mister . . . Sharpe, Castor.” Violet held out the bowl.

  “Thank you.” Sharpe took the bowl in his free hand, hanging the lantern up on a nearby hook. He gave the soup a sniff.

  “Don't mean to be rude, miss,” he said apologetically, “but I did hear something about your cook poisoning someone just before I came on board.”

  The skipper snorted, reminding Violet of the accusations Quill had been throwing about.