Shooting the Rift - eARC

by Alex Stewart

  “Which way?” I asked, and to my complete lack of surprise, Clio began to stroll off down the street in the direction we’d been going aboard the cab.

  “It’s not far,” she assured me, after I’d trotted a couple of steps to catch up.

  Not that I minded. Even constricted as it was, the thoroughfare seemed huge and open after the narrow corridors of the Stacked Deck, the constant bubble and hum of humanity around us curiously invigorating. I was, of course, reminded of the streets I’d followed my aunt along on Skyhaven, but here there was no initial sense of order, like the one I’d experienced on first leaving her apartment. Even the miserable weather seemed there to remind me of the random nature of the world, a raw, vibrant presence, instead of the omnipresent blandness of the residential sectors of the orbital.

  “Pardon me.” A young transgener, his purple fur, bisected by a vertical blue stripe down the center of his face, and matted against his skin by the rain, shot me an apologetic look as our shoulders bumped, forced together by the press of the crowd.

  I nodded politely, trying not to gag at the smell, which reminded me rather too strongly of a wet dog. “You’re welcome,” I said, shooting a hand into my pocket. Sure enough I grabbed a wriggling tail, trifurcated at the tip into rudimentary fingers, which I squeezed tightly until my would-be pickpocket’s lips compressed into a thin line. My point made, I released it, feeling the extraneous limb withdraw back to the open air. “We all make mistakes.”

  I half expected some thinly veiled threat in response, but the fellow just beat a hasty retreat, disappearing into the crowd with an expression in which relief, resentment and contempt seemed curiously intermingled.

  “Nicely done,” Clio said. “I wondered if you’d spot what he was up to.”

  “I didn’t,” I admitted. “I’ve just got a nasty suspicious mind.”

  “And good reflexes,” Clio said, with what seemed to be a hint of admiration.

  I shrugged. “Athlete, remember?”

  To my relief we were coming to a block consisting mainly of bars and diners, with fewer of the less reputable businesses (and their distracting employees) to be seen. Though many of the passersby were dressed like cargo handlers and other port employees, Clio and I were far from being the only ships’ crew visible: clearly the local recreation industry was flourishing because it catered to their needs as well as to the locals. Which made sense—when you were only going to be around for as long as it took to unload one cargo and find another, you wouldn’t want to spend too much time travelling to find your entertainment. Most of the starfarers wore Guild patches somewhere on their clothing, although a minority didn’t, sporting the logo of a non-Guild shipping line instead, or, in a couple of cases, nothing at all.

  “Freebooters,” Clio said when I asked, with an expression of deep disapproval. “Non-Guilders who’ve got hold of a ship somehow, and scrape a living hustling what work they can.”

  “Sounds tough,” I said, neutrally. If Rennau had lost the Stacked Deck to financial misfortune, with the resources of the Guild behind him, I could barely imagine how hard an independent trader would find it to keep their ship in the sky.

  “Better believe it,” Clio said, with a venomous glare at the oblivious back of a photosynthesising transgener, whose usual lack of clothing was augmented by a tattooed ship’s patch on her upper arm. “The only way they can compete with the Guild is by cutting their margins so much they can barely break even on a run. Unless they just steal the cargo instead.”

  “Does that happen often?” I asked. Getting a reputation for that sort of thing didn’t sound like good business to me, and I suspected she might be exaggerating. Clearly there was no love lost between Guilders and the Freebooters.

  “Now and again,” Clio said. “Not so often you won’t find a shipper willing to take the risk. Or threatening to, to get the price down.” She watched the green woman undulate into a tavern, accompanied by a couple of her shipmates, and sighed. “Damn. We’ll have to find a different bar now.”

  “Really?” I wasn’t just surprised, I was faintly shocked. “Just because there are a few Freebooters in there?”

  “There’ll be more than a few,” she said. “They stick together. Walk in there wearing that—” she indicated my Guild patch—“and we’ll be fighting our way out again.”

  “I can take care of myself,” I said, with more confidence than I felt.

  “Right.” Clio seemed unconvinced. “But we’re still finding a different bar.”

  I glanced up and down the street. They all looked pretty much the same from where I was standing.

  “Pardon me,” a voice said at my elbow, in the slightly nasal tones I generally associated with citizens of the League. I stepped aside reflexively, making room for a blond fellow of about my age and height to slip past on the crowded sidewalk, arm in arm with a brunette. Both wore Toniden Line livery, and I glanced at the ship patches on their shoulders as they moved past, moved by no more than idle curiosity—then fought to keep my expression neutral. They were both from the Eddie Fitz.

  “How about this one, then?” I suggested, indicating the doorway into which they’d disappeared.

  Clio shrugged. “Guess it’ll do,” she agreed.

  I’d feared the bar would be too crowded to keep my quarry in sight, but it was still too early in the evening to be really packed; a few of the locals were occupying tables, nursing tankards of ale, having just completed shifts in the nearby warehouses judging by their clothing and general air of fatigue, and the two deckhands from the Eddie Fitz were turning away from the bar counter, similar mugs in their hands. I spotted five or six other little groups of starfarers in there as well, mainly from Toniden Line vessels, although there were a few Guild patches at a couple of other tables. No Freebooters, though, much to my relief, as I strongly suspected that if there had been, Clio would simply have turned and walked back out again.

  “What’ll you have?” I asked, as we approached the counter, slipping my hand into my jacket pocket for my purse. We wouldn’t be getting our full wages until the cargo had been signed and paid for, but Remington had handed out a small advance in the local currency as soon as we’d landed: a Guild custom I heartily appreciated, as my own stock of cash had run seriously low.

  “I’m getting the first one,” Clio said. “I promised you a drink, remember?”

  “Far be it from me to make a Guilder break her word,” I said, not quite so much in jest as I was pretending.

  “Men have died for less,” she agreed, in the sort of voice people use when they’re making a joke out of something which might be literally true. She turned to the bar, which seemed to have been put together from preformed plastic units imprinted with an unconvincing wood grain effect, and spoke to the man behind it. “Two beers, warm enough to taste.” She glanced back at me. “That is how you like it, right? Not how they ruin it on Skyhaven?”

  “Perfect,” I said, as she returned her attention to the bartender. He kept up a continual stream of small talk as he drew the drinks, to which she responded with a fair degree of animation; which was fine by me, as it was keeping her nicely distracted. As I’d reached for the purse, my fingers had encountered something else in the bottom of my pocket which had definitely not been there when we left the Stacked Deck; something I wanted to investigate at once.

  Finding a vacant table to sit at, I slipped the small hard object out of my pocket and looked at it, with my eyes, and through my datasphere: a small, single-use memory cache, pulsing with pent-up information.

  There was only one way it could have got there: clearly there had been more to my encounter with the would-be pickpocket than had at first met the eye. But whether he’d left the cache there on purpose, or dropped it by accident when I interrupted him, I had no idea. If it was the former, then why? Chances were it had something to do with my clandestine commission from Aunt Jenny: she’d told me that her local asset would get in touch with me, and perhaps this was his way of doing i
t. On the other hand, furboy might be an enemy, not an ally, and the tempting payload glittering in the corner of my ‘sphere a malign piece of sucker bait, intended to do anything from strip-mining whatever it could from my own ‘ware, to pureeing my frontal lobes.

  I probed the packet cautiously, but none of the antibodies I’d stacked around it activated, so, somewhat reassured, I slit it open.

  Good morning, Simon. My aunt’s virtual image hovered on the fringes of my ‘sphere, fragmenting and spluttering in the manner of most riftcom transmissions. If it really is morning when you get this. I’ve asked Peter to record it and pass it on to you, but he has his own way of going about things. At the mention of the name I received a brief image of my furry friend from the street, along with a datablurt, listing his surname (Mallow), where he could be contacted (Farland Freight Forwarding, a brokerage which, to my quiet satisfaction, had been close to the top of my self-generated list of possible fronts for her covert communications post), and rather more than I felt I needed to know about his genetweaks, sexual preferences, and taste in fast food. Which just went to show how green I was—only later did I realize that, if I read between the lines, I’d been given all the information required to track him down in a hurry if I needed to.

  He’s the contact I told you about, Aunt Jenny went on. If you find anything of interest, channel it back through him. There was a short pause while I waited for the message to end, then her businesslike demeanor fell away, revealing the woman I’d always thought I knew. I hope playing spies is as much fun as you thought it would be.

  Its job done, the cache discharged the remaining power in its battery through the circuits in a single electromagnetic pulse, frying its synapses, and making any attempt to reconstruct the message it had carried completely futile.

  “What have you got there?” Clio asked, joining me at the table, and placing the tankards between us.

  “Piece of junk,” I told her truthfully. “Just found it.” I dropped it on the tabletop, among the litter of snack wrappers and discarded glasses left by its previous occupants. Like the counter, the furniture was made of lightweight plastic failing to masquerade as wood, which seemed somehow appropriate for my new life. I wasn’t quite sure who or what I was any more, or even what I was doing here; I’d followed the couple from the Eddie Fitz more or less on impulse, but now I came to think about it, I couldn’t see any good reason to have done so. They were drinking, and holding hands, and acting pretty much like everyone else in the place, even Clio and me (apart from the hand-holding). All right, their ship was a little unusual, but it was hardly the first fleet auxiliary to end up in private hands, and they definitely didn’t look as though they were planning to invade Rockhall. In fact, if the kiss they were sharing was anything to go by, right about now they probably wouldn’t notice if someone invaded Numarkut.

  “Congratulations.” Clio raised her mug in an exaggerated toast. “You’re now an honorary Guilder. Long may you remain one of us.”

  “Amen.” I clinked my mug against hers, and took an appreciative swallow. Then the exact meaning of her words made its way through the fog of confusion still clouding my synapses. “Honorary? How does that work?”

  “You’re a full member when you finish your apprenticeship,” Clio said, as though explaining to a kindergartner that the sky was blue. “Unless you’re Guild born, like me. But you’re a dirtwalker. You have to earn it.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, savoring another mouthful of the ale. It seemed we had at least one taste in common. “So that means . . .”

  Clio shrugged. “It’s academic, really. You’re a Guilder for as long as you stick to the rules, but if you screw up badly enough before you finish the apprenticeship, John can turf you out again. Or one of the Guild Masters can.”

  Great. Given my track record so far, it seemed my days as a Guilder were numbered.

  Clio spluttered into her drink. “Don’t look like that. It hardly ever happens.”

  “Glad to hear it.” I tried to push the thought to the back of my head, but it bounced straight back to the front again. I shrugged, with a fine show of the nonchalance I couldn’t really make myself feel. “I suppose I could always see if the Freebooters were hiring.”

  The moment the words left my mouth, I knew I’d put my foot in it again. Clio took a slow, deliberate swallow from her tankard, and placed it carefully on the tabletop.

  “Don’t even joke about it.” The tightness of her voice belied the lightness of her words. “Their ships are fatal accidents waiting to happen, and the only Freebooters not in jail are the ones who haven’t been caught yet. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

  “Just kidding,” I said carefully, feeling as though I was cutting the red wire in a thriller virt. “Anyhow, it’s not going to happen.” Not if I could help it, anyway. I’d already had more than my share of second chances, and I wasn’t about to squander this one, however my errand for Aunt Jenny turned out. I drained my tankard. “Same again?”

  “Why not?” Clio seemed happy to accept a liquid olive branch, so I made my way back to the bar, pulling the leather bag of coins out of my pocket.

  The barman smiled at me, the easy professional grin of a man to whom all the faces on the other side of the counter look the same after a while, and made momentary eye contact: just long enough to let me know that he’d registered my presence, and would deal with me as soon as he could. “Be right with you.” Then he returned his attention to the customer he was serving.

  It was the blond crewman from the Eddie Fitz.

  “Hi.” The word slipped out before I even realized I was speaking. The man turned and looked at me, with an expression of polite curiosity, probably wondering where I knew him from, or if was about to try and borrow money. “We’re docked a couple of cradles away from you. Saw your ship on the way in.”

  “Did you?” The words were politely neutral, but the intonation said “Piss off.” I nodded, pretending to miss the subtext, and deployed the ingenuous expression I’d used at soirees on Avalon to let dull women think they were cleverer than me.

  “Unusual design,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t know. I just load the cargo.” Then a belated concession to my apparent guilelessness, and a blatant lie, neatly rolled into one. “Nice to have met you.”

  “You too.” I watched him return to his girlfriend, and say something I didn’t catch; whatever it was, it made her glance in my direction, and laugh. I began to wonder if gathering intelligence was really my forte.

  “What’ll it be?” the barman asked, and I dumped the empty mugs on the counter top.

  “Two more of these.”

  “Coming right up.” The first mug began to fill. “Been down long?”

  “Couple of hours,” I said, wondering why he was bothering to repeat the conversation he’d just had with Clio only a few minutes ago, practically verbatim. Perhaps he never listened to the replies. “Just got into town.”

  “Hope you’re having a good time.” He placed the second drink on the counter, next to the first. “Anything else?”

  Snack to go with it? I sent.

  Clio glanced up, and nodded. Nuts. Roasted.

  “Roasted nuts,” I said, craning my neck to get a look at the rest of the selection. “And a packet of beet chips.”

  “Don’t sell many of those,” the barman said, dropping the selection next to the drinks. “Not all that popular.” There seemed to be faint edge of hostility in his voice now, held carefully in check, and for the first time I remembered Plubek’s warning about the locals picking sides. “Except with Commonwealthers.”

  “That’ll be because it’s a popular snack there,” I said neutrally, locking eyes with him. “How much?”

  “Four talents eighty-five.” He broke eye contact first, and busied himself with the till.

  I pulled out a handful of change, and sorted through it, a couple of coins dropping to the counter, where they rolled and fell sideways in a pool of something sti
cky. One was a piece of local currency, a five talent piece, the other a Commonwealth guinea, which the barman picked up between finger and thumb, and regarded as if he’d just found a mouse dropping on the counter. I nodded to the five talent piece, and held my hand out for the guinea. “There’s five. Keep the change.”

  “Keep the lot.” He picked up the local coin too, and dropped them both into my outstretched palm. “We don’t serve your kind in here.”

  “My kind?” I messaged Clio. I think we’re leaving.

  Why? Then she looked across at us, reading the hostile body language.

  “You’re Commonwealth. I can smell it on you.”

  “We’ve just arrived from Avalon,” I said levelly. “Guild ships get around.” I pointed, in a slightly exaggerated manner at the Guild patch on my jacket.

  “You expect me to believe that? It’s just been sewn on.”

  “Trouble, Dev?” A couple of burly men in Toniden Line livery materialized at my elbow, addressing the barman in friendly tones, which hinted heavily that they were hoping for an affirmative answer.

  “Commonwealther stinking the place up.” The barman’s scowl intensified, as something else belatedly occurred to him. “And he was asking Jaq questions. About his ship.”

  “Was he?” The burlier of the two digested this, and turned to me, in what he probably imagined was an intimidating manner. “Now why would you do that?”

  “We’re in an adjacent berth. Just being neighborly.” I shifted my weight as unobtrusively as possible, redistributing it, ready for a rapid sidestep. This clown would be the first to swing, while the other tried to get behind me and grab my arms. With the counter impeding them, they could only move one way—if I was quick enough I’d get out from between them, and away while they were still entangled. If I wasn’t, on the other hand . . .