Pelquin's Comet

by Ian Whates

  Seconds later and they were over the landing field, buildings replaced by the metallic beetle-like forms of flitters and ships as Anna brought the Comet over the allotted berth and set her down.

  They opened the cargo door almost at once – the most effective way to vent the staleness of recycled air, even if only to replace it with fresh urban pollution – and so had the opportunity to sample Babylon from an in-your-face perspective It wasn’t the river that grabbed their attention now so much as the smell. La Gossa stank. Of too many people crammed for too long into too little space. The heat didn’t help either. Humidity was so high that Pelquin half expected to see the air itself start to sweat.

  Bren had been on the coms long before they hit atmosphere, tracking down and then hiring the medical help they would need for Monkey. It meant another chunk of Pelquin’s money gobbled up – or rather the bank’s money – but he had no choice, at least not if he wanted to avoid a mutiny. The little mechanic was popular, and the last thing he needed when heading off on the biggest caper of his life was dissent from a crew that wasn’t fully committed to the cause.

  Besides, the medical emergency would provide a convenient distraction while he and Nate saw to the business that had really brought them here.

  Pelquin glanced to one side to find Drake staring at him. The intensity of the banker’s gaze was discomforting, almost as if the bastard could read his mind. Pelquin resolved to be more guarded with his expressions. If anyone around here needed distracting, it was Drake.

  An ambulance screeched up within minutes of their landing, which Pelquin thought pretty impressive, though Bren didn’t seem to agree. “Bastards told me they’d be waiting here for us!” she growled. Monkey, still in his cryochamber, had been loaded onto a gravsled, though not without considerable effort and cursing. As soon as the back of the ambulance slid open, Bren and Nate manoeuvred the over-burdened sled through the loading bay and down the ramp, to where a pair of green liveried medics waited.

  Bren wanted to go with Monkey, but Pelquin forestalled her. “What good is that going to do?”

  “It’ll reassure me he’s being properly looked after, which will do me the power of good, I can promise you,” she replied.

  “The doc will see to that. I need you here.”

  “To do what, exactly?”

  “Help me find a new mechanic.”

  “A new what? You’re abandoning him?”

  “Of course not! You know me better than that. But the doc reckons that,” he hesitated, choosing his words carefully, “whatever happens, it’ll be a while before Monkey is going to be fit enough to travel, and we can’t afford to hang around. So we take someone on, temporary crew, this trip only. We bring them back here when the job’s done and pick up Monkey. By then he’ll be all fixed-up and as lecherous as new.” Or so they could all hope.

  “Really? A shipee, for one trip only?”

  “My word on it.”

  She might not have liked it but Bren was professional enough to know he was right. She stayed and the doc went off in the ambulance. Shortly afterwards, Nate disappeared into town to start sourcing suppliers for the equipment that needed replacing.

  “Anna, break out the hull scrubbers.” The hiccup in RzSpace had unnerved him, and he wasn’t about to take any chances. Despite the name, earned because the small beetle-like mechanoids looked as if they were cleaning the ship as they made their methodical way across its hull in tight formation, they had nothing to do with cleaning. Instead, they were designed to check the integrity of the hull in minute detail, noting any possible weakness. Hairline cracks in the heat laminate, fatigued plating, stressed cooling fins – scrubbers could spot a potential failure before one actually occurred, long before a ship’s standard systems would pick up on a problem. They were, however, something of a luxury; hideously expensive and considered unnecessary by most. The look of surprise on Drake’s face spoke volumes.

  Evidently Anna had noted that look too. “The skip won them in a particularly intense hand of Black Hole,” she explained.

  “You don’t think we’d have anything as extravagant as hull scrubbers otherwise, do you?” Bren added.

  Pelquin chose to ignore her.

  They were on a tight schedule, which gave him very little leeway. As soon as the formalities of their arrival had been dealt with, Pelquin went in search of Monkey’s temporary replacement, with Bren in tow. Drake chose to tag along as well. Nobody objected, not even Pelquin. At least this way he could keep an eye on the banking bastard.

  The saying goes that if you want to find a decent bar you should follow the spacers, because no one knew more about booze than they did. To Drake, the flaw in this frequently quoted maxim was obvious: when a spacer came into port, especially after a lengthy trip, proximity generally won out over quality. Anywhere serving alcohol would do. He therefore had low expectations of the bar Pelquin led them to, which was just as well because the place fully lived down to his every fear. The captain’s own philosophy when it came to finding a new engineer seemed about as sophisticated as the spacers’. The Rusty Rivet was the nearest bar to the landing field – and Drake had to wonder if this was really the best that local knowledge could recommend.

  The bar was busy. While it might not have been the worst establishment he had ever drunk in, Drake wouldn’t be recommending it to anybody either. Dark, over-warm and smoky, those were his initial impressions.

  Anna hadn’t joined them, staying with the ship, Nate was off somewhere in La Gossa, purportedly to replace the equipment damaged at New Sparta, though why he couldn’t have done so from the security of the Comet Drake wasn’t entirely certain. Perhaps it was just an excuse to stretch his legs and see something of the place before they lit out again. Or perhaps he had his own reasons.

  The doc had yet to return from the hospital; which left the three of them: Drake, Pelquin, and Bren. They attracted a few stares as they came in, though probably due to the banker’s grey pinstripe suit rather than anything else.

  Pelquin got the first round in. Drake carried his and Bren’s drinks across to the booth she’d managed to secure. Pelquin lingered at the bar, chatting, asking after any ships’ engineers who might be looking for a job. The place was packed with spacers; word should spread quickly enough.

  Please tell me we’re not going to be staying here for long, Mudball said. The stench of stale tobacco will be sticking to my fur for days. Drake ignored him, though he harboured similar concerns regarding his own suit.

  He held his glass to the light and studied the unappetisingly pale amber-brown liquid within; the colour reminded him of rotting fruit, or urine. He sipped at the drink tentatively, finding a flat, sour brew that tasted as tired as the atmosphere. He was beginning to think that accompanying Pelquin and Bren had been a mistake.

  By the look of things, the two of them were intent on spending a sizeable portion of the day sitting in this bar simply waiting for would-be mechanics to wonder over. They were welcome to, he certainly wouldn’t be.

  He still didn’t believe that their arrival at Babylon had been as random as it was meant to appear. The captain’s expression as they came in to land had been one of satisfaction. The man was up to something and Drake was determined to find out what.

  He gulped his beer down, finishing it more out of politeness than for any other reason, and then made his excuses.

  “What?” said Pelquin, feigning surprise. “You’re not going to hang around to second guess my decision?”

  Drake paused in the process of leaving and glanced around at the motley crew of spacers that surrounded them. “Oh I’m sure you’ll cope without any input from me. It looks as if you’ll be spoilt for choice.”

  Pelquin raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

  As soon as Drake had departed, Pelquin’s expression slipped towards a scowl. “Typical banker,” he muttered.

  “What do you mean?” Bren asked.

  “He didn’t even get a round in.”

 
“And that’s a bad thing?” She lifted her glass and squinted at its contents. “I mean, have you tasted this rat’s piss?”

  “Yeah, I know, but it’s the principle.”

  “Heads up. We’ve got company.”

  The figure approaching them didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Dishevelled, unshaven, bleary-eyed, looking as if he’d been out on the mother of all benders the previous night which had only wound down a short while ago. However, Pelquin knew better than to judge by appearances.

  The man stopped in front of their table. “Hear you’re looking for an engineer.” He gazed at them from beneath heavily lidded eyes, swaying slightly like a tree responding to the whim of changeable winds, and Pelquin feared he was about to topple onto them like so much felled timber. The man looked barely capable of standing on his own two feet, let alone wielding any tools.

  Pelquin glanced across at Bren, whose sour expression suggested she was about as impressed by their first candidate as he was. He was saved from the need to respond by the intervention of a new voice, a woman’s. “No they’re not, ’cos they’ve already found one.”

  At least she sounded sober.

  The tottering man jerked his head around as if stung. He stared at the speaker with a vaguely baffled expression, clearly trying to sift meaning from the string of words. “Wa… waddya mean? Who?”

  “Me, obviously.”

  It would have been easy to underestimate the girl’s age. Her build was the culprit there, though there was nothing soft about her; instead her slenderness suggested the toughness of taut wire. Her body was almost androgynous, with no real widening of the hips and the merest hint of breasts beneath clothes that had surely been chosen for their neutrality. Only her face bore unambiguous testament to her femininity. Despite being framed by hair cut short into a ragged crop and the absence of makeup, the combination of high cheekbones and large eyes conspired to make her undeniably attractive. Pelquin liked her at once, without being able to articulate why. Perhaps it was the eyes, in which he read intelligence, fierce defiance, and, most intriguingly, desperation, perhaps even fear. This girl was running away from something, whether inner demons or more tangible ones he couldn’t say, but it meant that she might need them just as much as they needed her.

  “Who the fuck are you?” asked their first would-be mechanic, who still hadn’t grasped the fact that he was already redundant.

  “The right woman for the job,” she replied.

  She certainly talked a good fight. Pelquin just hoped her competence matched her attitude. If so, they might just be in business.

  Her attention then switched fully to Pelquin and Bren, effectively dismissing the swaying man. “You came in on an old comet transport, right? Twin thrusters and mobile landing jets.”

  So, she’d had the sense to ask a few question of the barman before coming over. Clearly not stupid, this one.

  Their drunken friend continued to ignore the inevitable. He snorted and said, “Anyone could have said that.”

  The girl favoured him with a cold smile. “Perhaps, but you didn’t. And you’ll know, of course, what type of engines she’s heftin’.”

  “Well, it depends…” the man said, brow furrowed as if trying to remember something just beyond the reach of his recall.

  “Yeah, you’re right, it does depend. So what are the options?”

  As job interviews went, this was an interesting twist – one applicant interviewing the other. Pelquin sat back, enjoying the show.

  “Ehm…” The man was clearly floundering.

  “Come on,” the girl pressed, “none of us have got all day.”

  “Well, that is… I’d have to see…”

  She put him out of his misery, turning back to face Pelquin. “Most likely it’s the seven point twos, unless she’s a really old ’un, in which case it might be the six point eights. Either way you’ve got a lot of grunt for a comparatively small ship, though she handles like a pig in atmosphere – except when it comes to landing, when you can drop her gently onto a dinner plate, if your pilot’s good enough.”

  Pelquin was aware of Bren beside him giving an appreciative nod and didn’t see the point in wasting any more time. It wasn’t as if the Rusty Rivet was the sort of place anyone would want to waste time in unless they had to. “Okay,” he said, “you’ve just earned yourself a trial.” He rose to his feet, glad to abandon the half-drunk beer.

  “Hey, what about me?” asked the tottering man.

  “You, my friend, have just earned yourself some more time at the bar.” Reaching into a pocket, Pelquin flipped him a coin – enough to cover the cost of a beer.

  The coin dropped to the table. The man stared at it and then turned to glare at his conqueror, who grinned and shooed him away with a contemptuous flick of her hand. For a moment he hesitated, but then he snatched up the coin and stumbled off muttering, “Fucking freak.”

  The girl clearly heard him and jerked around, but the offender was no longer paying attention. The words had obviously stung, as if this wasn’t the first time she’d heard them.

  As they left the bar and headed back towards the ship, Pelquin fell into step beside Bren, slowing down slightly and letting the girl walk a few paces ahead.

  He said quietly, “She was right about the engine models, I take it?”

  “Haven’t got a clue,” Bren replied equally sotto voce.

  He grunted. “I suppose we both ought to know, but…”

  “I know; that’s always been Monkey’s department,” she finished for him.

  “Exactly.”

  Pelquin studied the girl’s back as she walked ahead of them. One thing she’d definitely been right about was the way the ship handled in atmosphere – a real pig – and he had to admit that the kid had balls; metaphorically speaking at any rate.

  “What did you say your name was again?” he asked.

  “I didn’t,” the girl replied without breaking stride. “But you can call me Leesa.”

  They’d taken Leesa straight to the engines. She wasted no time in sliding aside the cowlings and getting to work. He left Bren to keep an eye on her and headed to the bridge. Anna was there, lounging in the padded pilot’s chair and watching something on the screen as she sucked on a carton of goodness knew what through a striped straw.

  “Not interrupting anything, am I?”

  She relaxed her vacuum-like sucking long enough to say, “No,” oblivious to any sarcasm. “Just catching up on a space rom.”

  “Don’t know how you can watch that garbage,” he grumbled. “Any word from Nate or Doc?”

  “Nope, not yet.”

  “Let me know when you do.”

  She looked at him as if he’d said something stupid, but then smiled and said sweetly, “I will.”

  Pelquin resisted the temptation to say ‘carry on’ as he left, realising that she already had; the straw firmly back between her lips, gaze glued to the screen. He shook his head and left, stopping off at the galley for some chilled water – anything to wash away the taste of that wretched local beer – trying to find things to do so that he wouldn’t return to engineering too quickly. Futile effort, as it turned out, since Bren appeared even as he swallowed the last of the water.

  “She’s finished already?” he said, while thinking: And you’ve left a complete stranger alone with our engines?

  “Well… you need to come and hear this.”

  What the hell does that mean? Nothing good, he’d warrant. He followed her along the gantry and down the steps.

  The girl, Leesa, was still fiddling with something under the cowling.

  “Have you fixed it?” he demanded as they strode in to join her.

  “No,” she replied, taking her arms out of the engine and looking round.

  Pelquin felt disappointed. “Well, good luck on finding a berth on another ship, then.”

  “I could fix it,” she continued, “but I wouldn’t be doing you any favours if I did.”

  Ah, good, perhaps not
the disaster he’d feared after all. Pelquin had to fight back a smile. “And that would be because…?”

  “Because if I did sort out the immediate fault I wouldn’t be dealing with the source of the problem, just patching up a symptom. You’ve got a dodgy inductor sheath fitted, completely the wrong model. I don’t know who’s responsible, but it’s been jimmied into a space that it really doesn’t want to go into and that’s putting the whole system under pressure. ’Cos of that, you’ve ended up with a ruptured feeder pipe. If I fix the pipe without swapping the sheath, the pipe or something else will only blow again sometime, somewhere… and soon.”

  Pelquin shrugged. “Then put a new inductor sheath in.”

  “Now why didn’t I think of that?” Sarcasm too; she had spirit, no denying that. “I’d love to; and the new one would be… where exactly?”

  “No idea.” Monkey always dealt with that sort of thing.

  “Isn’t there anything in the store room that would do?” Bren indicated the closed door behind which lay the small cupboard-like space that was Monkey’s private domain.

  “Ah, yes, the store room. You’ve got a few bits and spares knocking around in there, sure,” and the girl glanced towards the door with disdain, “but I don’t see no inductor sheath.”

  “So how come we’ve managed to get along fine for so long with the wrong part, then?”

  “Oh, it’ll work for a while… A day, a month, a year maybe, but at some point it’ll go, most likely when you’d least want it to, stranding you. No telling when. You’ve been lucky so far, but do you really wanna count on that sort of luck forever?”

  Bren snorted. “Not with the way Lady Luck’s been treating us of late, no.”

  Leesa shrugged. “It’s up to you. I can patch things up so that your engines will work but they’d be an accident waiting to happen – and it might not be anything as simple as a busted pipe the next time – or I can do the job properly and squeeze some extra performance out of the system at the same time.”

  This was more like it. “Extra? How much extra?”

  “It’s hard to say; maybe as much as ten percent, maybe a little less.”