by Mel Keegan
“Before it eats right through the bloody deck,” Jazinsky muttered.
Behind them, the service lift was grinding down again, and as the cage opened Travers heard Grant, van Donne, Ramon and Byrne, talking in guttural undertones. They were laying bets and thrashing out odds. Was Zwerner in one of the pods? Was he dead or alive?
“Three to one, he got off the ship,” van Donne was insisting. “You know what they say about cockroaches.”
“Yeah, but that crew of his – I wouldn’t turn my back on any one of them,” Byrne reasoned. “Even money, babe.”
“He’s right,” Ramon said glibly. “Fifty says he got out.”
“Fifty says he was screwed by his own crew,” Byrne offered. “Billy?”
The medic snorted. “Fifty says he shot everybody to get to a pod, and just as he got in, some bugger jammed the bread knife between his shoulder blades, so he stumbled over the locking ring, fell flat on his fat arse and died about three minutes ago.”
The peculiar, even perverse humor inspired a chuckle. Travers had come to rest with Marin, at the door’s control panel. Most of the sensors were calibrated to scan for chemicals and radiotoxicity, but they would also register life signs, thermal signatures. Marin was looking at the grubby little flatscreen.
“Two pods are still sealed,” he mused. “The third is open … one body up on its feet, alive. One immobile and getting cold. Dead. Can’t read anything out of the two sealed pods. Neil?”
“Go.” Travers primed the rifle, shouldered it, and took point as Marin thumbed the control to open the door.
A pale, drawn face peered at them out of darkness which was alleviated only by the wash of red and green instrument lights from inside the pod. Just enough illumination issued from the cavity of the craft for Travers to be able to make out the shapes of a tall, thin body on its feet, and a second body still in the pod, hunched over and obviously dead. It was a young man on his feet, both hands raised, eyes wide in the kind of dread inspired by the certainty of imminent death. The three pods were merely elongated egg shapes, gray skinned, featureless save for four small maneuvering packs set into the stern, and stubby pylons which served as landing struts.
“Don’t shoot, man – I was nobody, I was just a – a secretary, I was only there because I kissed the right ass and a few of the guys thought I was pretty.” He lifted his hands way up over his head. “I’m not armed, I swear to God I’m not. I don’t know guns!”
“Yeah, all right, you can shut up now,” Marin told him. “Tully, grab him, get him out of the way. You got something to cuff his hands?”
The lights chose that moment to flicker on, as Vaurien located the panel and felt his way across it. The sudden blue-mauve glare hurt the eyes, and Travers lifted a hand to shield them.
“I got cable ties,” Ingersol said with a certain malicious glee. He handed the AR-90 to Jazinsky and began to search his hip pockets.
In a cynical process of elimination, Travers looked at the body still in the pod first. He unfolded the man, turned his face toward van Donne and lifted a curious brow.
“Nope,” van Donne said bitterly. “Not Zwerner. Not even a second cousin.” He was striding toward the next nearest of the pods. “Where’s the remote, kid? Who is that, anyway? Do I know you?” He glanced back at the survivor.
“It’s – I’m Kiveris. George Kiveris … I met you once, you wouldn’t remember me, but I never forgot you, Captain. I’m just a secretary, I never hurt anyone.” The kid was scared enough to be stammering. “The remote’s in my pocket here – left jacket pocket.”
Ingersol thrust a hand in, found it and tossed it in van Donne’s direction. The Freespacer fielded it deftly, thumbed it on and aimed it at the next pod. The hatch cracked with a hiss of equalizing pressures, but at a glance van Donne was satisfied and passed on. The occupants were two women. One was already dead; the other was injured, groaning, whimpering, and blood saturated them both.
Without a word, Grant went to work, and in seconds the groaning subsided into quiet as he filled the woman with sedatives and painkillers. He was assessing her injuries, and the possibility of moving her, while van Donne opened the last of the escape pods.
It cracked with the familiar hiss, and Travers had taken a step closer to van Donne for a better view into the pod when the bark of a machine pistol on full automatic tore pitilessly into human eardrums. The whole decontamination bay reverberated with the noise, and Travers was listening to the ping of his ears as he shouldered the Chiyoda and fired.
One individual was in the pod, hunched down against the side, under the line of the hatch and firing blind. The machine pistol was still braying, its muzzle moving through a wide arc, spraying rounds in every direction. With a hoarse cry, van Donne pitched backward onto the deck and Marin dove flat, out of the line of fire. Travers pulsed his finger on the trigger twice, three times, until the din of the full auto stopped and the weapon fell out of the pod with a plastic clatter. Vaurien, Jazinsky and van Donne’s people had flung themselves out of the decontamination bay and taken cover against the outside bulkhead. Ingersol and his prisoner were on the deck beside the door, and Ingersol had thrown one arm over his head to protect his ears.
No groaning issued from inside the pod, and Travers swore softly. “Damnit, we should have seen that coming. Curtis?”
“I’m all right.” Marin was already back up on his knees. “But I’m not so sure about van Donne. He looks bad. Ramon –” raising his voice “– you might want to get in here. Bill, you want to put some priority on Sergei?”
“I dunno. Do I?” Grant looked from Travers – his old commanding officer – to Vaurien, under whom he served now.
“Yeah,” Richard said quietly, “you do. Sergei’s a damned good pilot with one hell of a ship. We needed him at Ulrand, we might need him again before this is over. What have you got in the pod there?”
“Hustlers,” Grant muttered as he packed up his equipment. “Very expensive ones. But I’ll bet they can’t fly or shoot for shit.” He was hurrying over to van Donne as he spoke.
Vaurien and Jazinsky hung back to let him work, but Byrne and Ramon hovered. They looked as white with shock as the survivor who was secured with cable ties now, back on his feet and meekly docile under Ingersol’s gun. In the pod, the body was a mess, but Travers had not hit its face. He peeled it back, set it against the seat, head against the headrest. “Ramon, you want to take a look? Any joy?”
In his brief career as a contract shooter, Ramon must have seen this kind of drama a thousand times. He looked into the dead man’s face without expression, but his voice shook with anger. “Oh, yeah. This one I’d know anywhere, dead or alive. And if he wasn’t already a mess of blood, I’d do him with great joy.”
“Boden Zwerner.” Marin slung the rifle and came closer to see the dead face, which he studied for some time. “They never look like you expect. He’s … ordinary.”
He was a man in late middle age, a little overweight, with a large belly and triple chins. His hair was mouse brown, his features were neither ugly nor handsome. Travers saw nothing exceptional about him. Nothing even interesting. Boden Zwerner was the kind of man one might pass on the street without even noticing him. He was the man who had facilitated the attempted murder of a whole world.
“Dead?” Vaurien asked. He was still standing back from Sergei’s prone form, not interested in coming closer or looking into the pod.
“Very dead,” Marin agreed. “And I realize this was the contract, but in one way it’s a shame. Shapiro could have spent weeks with this bastard under interrogation.” He lifted a brow at Travers. “Still, we’ve got the secretary, and if he’s anything like the usual secretary –”
“There’s nothing he doesn’t know about the family business,” Travers finished, “because when he’s not bent over the desk with his shirttails up around his ears, he’s eavesdropping on private calls, screening incoming messages and screwing his way to the best deal he can get.”
“You know secretaries.” Marin smothered an amused look as they returned to Vaurien and Jazinsky. In the doorway, Ingersol still had the rifle leveled on George Kiveris, and the kid was big-eyed, hanging on every word. “So, what do you know?” Marin speculated. “You were Zwerner’s secretary. You were there when the CL-389 event was organized.”
“No – I arrived after that, I swear it.” Kiveris’s throat bobbed repeatedly as he swallowed. “But I – I know stuff. I know good stuff. Like he said, I’m looking for the best deal I can get. Is what I know worth my life?”
Fury blazed in Ramon’s eyes as he swung on the younger man. “The best deal you can get, shithead, is to live a little longer, so you can talk to Shapiro. And if he lets you live, and if Sergei van Donne dies, you’re going to hell right behind him, entiende lo que digo?”
“I – yeah, I understand,” Kiveris stuttered.
Marin stooped over van Donne, watching Grant work. He had cut away jacket, shirt and vest, baring the man’s torso, and with the blood swabbed away and a shot of antibiotics already fired in, he was playing a handy over three bullet wounds. Marin set a hand on the medic’s shoulder. “Is there anything we can do?”
“Two of these holes are superficial, easy fixes,” Grant told him. “One bullet went right through, the other one’s lodged in the muscle, in his shoulder. But the third one hit his collar bone – and the bone’s in about twenty pieces. I’ll have to weld this back together, it’ll be days before he has the use of his left arm, and he’s going to ache for a month. He’s out cold – the impact went straight to his brain, knocked him out faster than a brick over the back of the skull.”
“He’s not going to die?” Ramon asked in a curious little voice.
“This one?” Grant gave him a reproachful look. “This one’s tougher than that. But he’s going to be a mess for a while. You might want to stay the hell out of his way, while he’s healing up. Best I can do is weld the bone and close the wounds. The rest’s up to him, and I’m guessing this big beauty’s a pedigree sonofabitch when he’s hungover or hurt.”
“Rafe?” Ramon sounded weak with relief.
“That’s about accurate,” Byrne judged. “He can be a bastard, and he’s never an angel. But he’s … Sergei.” He gave Ramon a challenging look. “You still want in?”
“I still want in.” Ramon dropped to one knee and set a hand on van Donne’s broad chest. “Jesus, he’s covered in scars.”
“Goes with the territory,” Marin said quietly. “Bill, you need a hand here?”
But Grant made negative gestures. He had just summoned a gurney from the Infirmary. Etienne was powering up the medical systems and four drones were even then on their way down with two light Arago sleds. “Nah, I can handle this. The only thing you can do here is close the pods and push ’em back out. Burial in space. I’ve got one woman still alive – the hustler – but she’s in a bad way. I don’t think she’s going to make it. She’s tranked out, full of antibiotics. I can get the wounds closed, pump some blood into her, but unless you guys know where I can get a spare liver to transplant in the next twelve hours, she’s following Zwerner like a loyal little concubine. I’ll do what I can for her, but don’t get your hopes up.”
“Like a what?” Travers demanded. He let Marin snake an arm around his waist and steer him out of Decon 3.
“When emperors and chieftains died, they say the concubines used to be strangled and buried alongside the boss as part of the grave goods,” Marin told him. “They buried the horses, dogs and eunuchs as well.”
“Cheerful,” Travers observed.
“I’ll task the drones, Bill,” Ingersol promised, “take care of the pods. Burial in space, neat and tidy.” He looked up at Vaurien as he and Jazinsky stepped out of the decon bay. “So, what do you want done with this George Kiveris character?”
Vaurien did not even look at the survivor. “Lock him up. He’s Harrison’s problem, not mine. Keep him fed, but don’t give him access to anything.” He cocked his head, listening, and Travers knew he was monitoring the tug’s busy comm loop. “Yes, Yuval – we’re done here,” he said to Greenstein. “You can take us away from all this, soon as you can jump.”
The pilot’s voice was a dry whisper over the combug in Travers’s ear: “Where to? No chance we’re headed back to civilization?”
“Not yet.” Vaurien looked from Travers and Marin to Jazinsky and back. “We’re going to Celeste, Yuval, best speed we can make. How long?
“A little more than two days,” Greenstein judged. “If you don’t mind me asking, what in the hell is at Celeste to make it worth the trip?”
“Close to three hundred human souls,” Jazinsky told him, “headed for the mines and the sexshops, if we don’t get them out of there. Good enough reason?”
“Good enough,” Greenstein sighed. “Tully, instruments say we’re good for a Weimann startup, any time. Anything I should know?”
“Nope. Drive engines are sweet.” Ingersol was shoving Kiveris along before him. “An e-space jump is on pilot’s discretion – she’s in good shape, Yuval.”
“In that case, we’re out of here, Richard – Celeste, no stops.”
A muscle in the pit of Travers’s belly began to relax at last. Another assignment was about to begin, but this one was over. Boden Zwerner was dead, and some small part of the price for CL-389 was paid. He wished Michael Vidal could have been here to see it finish. Vidal had been pivotal at Omaru, when the ore hauler was coming in hot on a slingshot course out of the Rabelais Drift. And Mick’s wingman, Roark Hubler, had been crippled there.
He sighed heavily, loudly enough for Marin to hear. Curtis stepped closer as they returned to the elevator, waiting, and at last Travers said, “I’m just thinking about absent friends.”
“Mick Vidal,” Marin guessed.
“I think he was born to be a dead hero.” Travers’s big arms closed around Marin’s much more slender frame. He set his head on Marin’s and closed his eyes. “It could have been any one of us. Or all of us.”
“When it’s our time, it will be,” Marin said against his neck. “That’s the Resalq belief. Mark Sherratt said this many times. You can run, you can hide, be a coward and a disgrace to your comrades, but you won’t live one minute longer than you’re supposed to.”
Travers lifted his head and looked down into Marin’s stormy eyes. “You believe that?”
“Yeah.” Marin took a long, deep breath. “I think I do. Look at the crazy stunts we’ve pulled since the Intrepid. We should have been killed a dozen times over. Mark would say it wasn’t our time. Like Sergei.”
“And Boden Zwerner’s time came,” Travers finished thoughtfully.
The lift opened with a rumble of motors which could have used a little work. Ingersol seemed to be making mental notes. Vaurien and Jazinsky stepped aside to make space for the drones to move out with the Arago sleds, and then stepped into the cage. Voices from Decon 3 told them Grant, Byrne and Ramon were handling van Donne between them, and all Travers wanted was a stiff drink, a soft bed and Curtis Marin to himself for an hour.
A long-familiar shimmy through the very fabric of the ship informed him beyond any doubt, the Wastrel had slithered into e-space like a snake sliding into the murky, churning waters of river rapids. Moments later Yuval Greenstein’s voice was a husky murmur over the comm, promising sixty hours to Celeste, and a smooth journey.
Chapter Four
Salvage tug Wastrel,
Celeste
For a moment Curtis Marin wondered what had woken him, and then he knew. It was a tongue, drawing coiled patterns across his right breast and leaving behind it a chill trail which prickled his skin and brought his nerves alive over ever inch of his body.
He opened one eye and focused on the top of Travers’s dark head. The lights had just come up automatically according to Etienne’s understanding of the human day/night cycle, and humans’ need for some simulation of night and day. The threedee was active, glowing pale blue as
ship, course and mission data began to update, but Marin had better things to think about.
Still feigning sleep, he let Travers amuse himself. The sheets were thrown back, and the tonguetip worked on down around his navel, while Neil’s right hand slipped between Marin’s thighs. His skin prickled deliciously – he suppressed a shiver, and Travers chuckled moistly against Marin’s belly.
“I know you’re awake,” he accused.
“No way. I can’t be. I’m dreaming,” Marin argued, though he arched his back in a stretch that crackled his joints. “This is too good to be real. You and me, and nobody shooting at us? It’s just a fantasy.”
“You think?” Travers moved down again, and his hands framed the Marin family jewels, which had apparently woken ahead of the rest of him. He tongued a caress across the most sensitive skin he could find, and breathed a stream of chill breath across it. Marin was still shivering when Neil straddled him, both hands spread on his chest for balance. He leaned forward, capturing both shafts between them, and rocking into Marin’s belly with simple, unhurried pleasure.
It could be like this every morning, Curtis thought as his arms went around the broader, stronger frame. It could be the quiet of birdsong and the wind in the tall grass, a cool breeze off the hills in the early morning, when the sky was still gold and pink with dawn.
As Travers rode him, as his legs spread and wrapped around Neil’s hips, he tried to recall the last time he has seen the dawn rise on a morning when you could actually open a window without asphyxiating. They seemed to have spent months on one ship after another, or at the science station in the vacuum of Kjorin, or in Riga, where the Resalq might have been able to tolerate the thin air of extreme altitude, but humans soon fainted. The longing to bask under a blue sky, breathing air which had not been pumped out of a processing plant, warm in the heat of a live sun, became a physical hunger which gnawed at him.
