Dark Run

by Mike Brooks

  Rourke’s expression didn’t really change, but her second nod had a sense of finality to it. ‘Okay then. Because I trust you. Don’t make me regret it.’

  Drift raised his glass to her in silent salute, and she turned and left his cabin without another word. Once the door had hissed shut behind her again he let out a breath and slumped back into his chair in wordless relief. The crew mostly took his word as captain, but of course a job like this would throw up extra doubts and questions. Similarly, Rourke usually accepted his lead on finding and executing jobs, in the same way as he automatically deferred to her on anything to do with fighting. They each had their own strengths, and they recognised and respected that. Still, you didn’t make a living in business by not looking closely at an offer which might be too good to be true, especially if your business was routinely conducted on the edges of the law.

  Drift grimaced. If his intuition was any judge, they’d earn their two hundred grand before this run was out. ‘Tighter than Old Earth’ was in smuggler parlance for a reason, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was placing all their fates in the hands of a cocky thrusterhead and a rookie slicer.

  ‘Well,’ he muttered, gulping down the rest of the whisky, ‘at least life is never dull.’

  HANDLE WITH CARE

  ‘There.’

  Jia pointed through the Jonah’s viewshield at a distant, blinking light, almost indistinguishable against the inky, star-studded backdrop of space. She looked down at her display again, then back up, and Drift could almost see her triangulating in her head. ‘Yup, definitely that one.’ She squinted at the screen. ‘The Gewitterwolke?’

  ‘The “w”s will be pronounced as “v”s,’ Drift corrected her absently, scratching at the skin around his right eye. ‘But yeah, that’s the one.’ A tapping noise caught his attention, and he turned to see Jenna working busily at her terminal. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Slicing,’ she replied, chewing on a strand of redblonde hair at the corner of her mouth. ‘Their ident’s an overlay, and a good one, but I can—’

  ‘Don’t,’ Drift said firmly, taking two quick steps to her terminal and planting a hand in the middle of her screen. She looked up at him, surprised.

  ‘But I thought we didn’t know—’

  ‘Let’s keep it that way,’ Drift told her quietly. ‘Two hundred grand says we don’t want to know that ship’s real name, or who it belongs to.’

  She stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Aye, Captain.’

  ‘You’re never normally that bothered ’bout the contract conditions,’ Apirana rumbled. The big Maori was taking up most of the space in the cockpit doorway and watching the panorama of sky slowly move in front of them as Jia orientated them on the distant vessel.

  ‘I don’t normally stand to make this big a loss if someone decides we’ve broken the agreement,’ Drift told him, moving away from Jenna’s terminal.

  ‘Don’t really see how y’can lose something you ain’t got yet,’ Apirana shrugged, ‘but I catch your drift.’ He paused for a second, then grunted. ‘No pun intended.’

  Drift just nodded at him, and returned to hovering behind the pilot’s chair. Jia cast an exasperated look back up at him, then returned her attention to the read-outs in front of her.

  ‘I can pilot a ship without a babysitter, you know.’

  ‘I’m not watching you,’ Drift lied, although he was also scanning the darkness and trying to pick out every moving blink of light which might indicate another ship, looking for encirclement patterns. ‘Anyone shadowing us?’

  ‘No one on sensor,’ Jia replied, ‘so either we’re alone, they’re sitting on our pìgu so tight they’ll be getting a roasting from the thrusters, or they’ve got a perfect blind field.’

  ‘Good,’ Drift muttered. He looked out of the viewshield again. The winking star of the Gewitterwolke was starting to resolve into the multiple running lights of a vessel under power as they got closer, and he thought he could make out the faint gleam of surfaces reflecting the system’s star. ‘C’mon A., let’s get down to the cargo bay.’

  ‘Gotcha,’ the Maori replied, easing away from the door frame in a manner which reminded Drift vaguely of an iceberg he’d once seen calving from a glacier during a flight over the Polar Ocean of New Shinjuku. Watching the huge man’s broad back as they walked focused Drift’s mind on exactly what might happen if his gamble failed and his secret got out. How would a man with a temper as legendary as Apirana’s react?

  He felt his heartbeat quicken a little. ‘Actually, you go on. I’ll catch up in a second.’

  ‘’Kay,’ the Maori replied over his shoulder, and kept walking. Drift stepped sideways, palmed his cabin door open and slipped inside. He made a beeline for the bottle of whisky by his bunk and sloshed a measure into a glass, then sank it in one practised motion.

  The liquor burned its way down his throat and he felt his nerves loosen a little. He debated another shot, but decided against it. He was confident he knew his limits, but there was no point tempting fate. He just needed to get through this rendezvous, and then . . .

  Then what? Sit on a secret all the way to Old Earth, lying to my crew? He cast a rueful glance at the bottle. I don’t know if there’s enough whiskey on board.

  He took a deep breath. He was Captain Ichabod Drift now, and he didn’t need whisky. He just liked it. This ship was the closest thing to a stable home most of his crew had ever had, and it was his duty to them to keep it that way. It was in everyone’s best interests. That meant making sure Kelsier didn’t go telling tales which might damage their trust in him, and it meant getting the job done without anyone finding anything out which could link him to the old politician.

  Especially Micah. He’s the only one who’d know the name.

  He took another breath, held it, let it out again, and stepped back out of his cabin. Time to go and play nice.

  The Jonah’s cargo bay was several times Drift’s height and spacious enough to hold three large freight containers (so long as the crew breathed in when squeezing around them). Apirana was waiting, of course, and Rourke, Micah and Jenna emerged from the stairway which led down from the canteen just as Drift arrived. Rourke nodded once at him, which he couldn’t help but interpret as This had better go well, or I’ll rearrange your face.

  ‘Jenna, you get the doors,’ Drift instructed as Rourke climbed into the cab of their small, tracked loader. ‘Micah, A.: Tamara will bring ’em aboard, you shift ’em into place.’

  The two men nodded as Jenna headed over to the door control, while Drift tucked his thumbs into his belt. Long-standing cautiousness meant he always wanted his hands near his guns when a deal was going down, but it was best to find some sort of excuse for them to be there. If that meant looking like a hick farmhand posing for a picture, then so be it.

  Seconds dragged by into minutes, until Jia’s voice crackled over the comm speakers. +They’ve opened the bay for us. Taking us in now.+

  Drift felt a sudden forwards momentum as the retros fired, braking the Jonah, then the hum as the electromagnets in the hull powered up to counteract the gravitational effect of the larger craft’s own subdeck Heim field. There followed some thirty seconds of what seemed like no motion at all, although Drift knew – or at least, hoped – that Jia was simply manoeuvring carefully to avoid hitting anything.

  +Setting down now.+

  There was a jolt, albeit a minor one, as Jia powered down the mags and the Jonah sank to meet the deck of the Gewitterwolke, then their craft’s engine throttled back and died as Kuai acted on his sister’s instructions. A few more seconds passed.

  +They’re pressurising the bay.+

  There was silence for about half a minute.

  +It’s quite a big bay . . .+

  Micah rolled his eyes. Apirana shifted on his feet and worked his shoulders. Drift looked over at Rourke, who met his gaze with the impassivity of a particularly unreadable statue. Jenna tried to look attentive. Then the lights over the
bay door changed from red to green, and Jia’s voice crackled over the intercom again.

  +Okay, sensors say you’re good to go. You’ve got a welcoming party, too; looks like . . . a Muslim woman and some goons? Four of them. They’ve got some crates.+

  Drift nodded, more to himself than anyone else, then directed a more definite tip of his head at Jenna. ‘Let’s go meet them.’

  Jenna hit the door release and a section of the Jonah’s thick exterior shielding started to swing downwards to form a ramp. There was a faint hiss as the pressure outside and inside equalised, and then harsh white light began to filter in through the widening gap. Drift’s right eye instantly adjusted to the rays hitting his face, although his natural left one took a couple of moments to catch up.

  By the time the ramp was halfway down he could see the faces of their welcoming party. Kelsier’s assistant was clad in a niqab again, and the datalens was still in place over one eye. Meanwhile, the two men who’d accompanied her to get him off the street and into the bar had been joined by another man and a woman, both with their own cybernetic augmentations. The appearance of the group wasn’t uniform – in all honesty, it was more like they’d been attacked by the vengeful and possibly parasitic contents of a scrapyard – but nor was it that uncommon. Manual workers often had replacements or enhancements to limbs to give added strength or endurance for their tasks, or sometimes had them completely replaced by specialist tools, and a bunch of cargo haulers might well pick up the variety of additions he could see in front of him. Then again, it was easy to conceal a weapon in a mechanical limb, quite apart from the potential damage the limb itself could do. The group in front of him didn’t appear to be armed, but Drift would have bet the Jonah that was a false impression.

  Jenna gave a faint squeak and he saw her pull back, away from the edge of the ramp and into the corner of the cargo bay, out of sight of the welcoming party. He shot her a questioning look but she merely pressed one finger to her lips in a universal gesture for silence, eyes wide and scared in her pale face, then turned and ran for the stairs. There was no time or opportunity to seek an explanation: Drift filed it away under things to ask about later and stepped forwards to the head of the ramp, eyes on the men and women in front of him and thumbs tucked into his belt.

  ‘Hola,’ he greeted them, then focused on the niqabclad woman. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name before.’

  ‘You may call me Sibaal,’ she replied, with no other motion of acknowledgement. She gestured to the four large, gunmetal-coloured oblong boxes behind her, each resting on a humming maglev bed which kept it slightly off the metal deck. ‘The cargo is here.’

  Drift nodded, although he was still surprised that a cargo this small could be worth two hundred grand just for delivery. Then again, each crate was easily large enough to contain a person, and pieces of microart no bigger than his thumb went for millions, so who was he to judge? ‘Well, this shouldn’t take long. If you want to set them down, we’ll get them on board with the loader.’

  ‘No need,’ Sibaal shook her head, ‘you may take the beds also.’ She gestured, and her four companions split two to a crate and started pushing. The crates slid easily forwards through the air, but when the electromagnets on the beds registered the sloping ramp and started to tilt upwards, it became clear that they were heavy; even the augmented haulers were showing effort as they pushed.

  The first crate cleared the top of the ramp and nudged into the cargo bay just as Drift realised that Rourke had slipped out of the loader and was at his elbow. He hadn’t heard her move. Again.

  ‘What’s up with the girl?’ she murmured.

  ‘No idea,’ he muttered back, ‘but you might want to keep an eye on things while I go talk to Miss Personality down there.’ Rourke nodded and took up station by the door release controls, while Drift sauntered down the ramp towards Sibaal, stepping aside to clear room for the second crate and its straining handlers.

  ‘You have the money?’ he asked, not feeling particularly inclined towards further pleasantries. She reached one hand into the opposite sleeve and pulled out a shiny, dark red oblong which she held out to him.

  ‘I assume you take plastic?’

  Drift retrieved his datapad from his pocket and slotted the credit chip into the reader. The information instantly sprang up: one hundred thousand USNA dollars credited to it, with no details of creditor or recipient. The piece of plastic itself was virtually worthless, but the electronic watermarks and security notes assured the viewer that it was a genuine, unsliceable (allegedly) Interstellar Credit Chip, which meant the currency programmed into it was as good as cold, hard cash in the hand.

  Drift nodded, and tried to look as though being handed this much money was an unremarkable event for him. ‘That’ll do nicely.’

  ‘Then we have a deal,’ Sibaal said, extending a hand for him to shake. Drift automatically returned the gesture with the practised ease of someone who’d sealed innumerable deals in a variety of different ways, despite the fact that actual physical contact was a long way down the list of things he’d expected from her. Her hand was small in his, but her grip was firm.

  He heard her sniff, and she withdrew her hand. ‘You’ve been drinking.’

  ‘And you’ve been party to blackmail,’ he replied, smiling humourlessly. ‘We all have our little character flaws.’

  A faint shifting of fabric suggested an aggravated exhalation, but she made no further comment and simply proffered a small data chip. ‘Your destination and timescale.’

  Drift tucked the credit chip into his pocket and scanned the data as it uploaded to his pad. A building address – the Van Der Graaf Centre, Ookmeerweg, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Old Earth – and confirmation of the date and time Kelsier had already told him.

  ‘Remember,’ Sibaal was saying, ‘the cargo must be delivered on time – neither early nor late.’

  ‘Yeah, Kel—’ Drift stopped himself just in case anyone was listening, but the rest of his crew were still inside the Jonah arranging the last of the crates. He lowered his voice nonetheless. ‘Kelsier drove that point home well enough. He’ll get what he’s paying for.’

  Sibaal’s eyes studied him coolly. ‘See that he does. Under most circumstances an employer would promise further work for a job well done. However,’ she tilted her head slightly to the side, ‘I believe you said you would not welcome such an offer.’

  ‘If it had been an offer rather than being grabbed off the street, held at gunpoint and threatened, then this might have all gone differently,’ Drift countered, then decided to change the subject. ‘Is there anything about the cargo we should know?’ Sibaal’s eyes narrowed slightly, and he sighed. ‘Just . . . do the crates need storing at a certain temperature, or are they particularly fragile, or—’

  ‘The contents are packed well and are not unduly sensitive to temperature or vibration,’ Sibaal replied. ‘So long as the crates remain unopened . . . and you don’t crash into anything . . . then there should be no problems.’

  ‘Well, that’s encouraging,’ Drift said, wondering about a farewell smile but deciding against it: regardless of the fact that his skiff was currently sealed inside her ship and a harmless pleasantry might not go amiss, Sibaal annoyed him. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the crate handlers returning down the ramp for the last time, with no indication that they’d gone storming through the ship trying to abduct Jenna or caused any other trouble while on board. ‘Looks like it’s time to go.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Sibaal agreed. ‘Safe journey, Captain Drift.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he muttered, waiting for her goons to tramp past before ascending the ramp himself. He exchanged nods with Rourke on the way past and his partner slapped the button to bring the ramp up again with a whine of hydraulics, then tapped the comm in her ear.

  ‘All aboard, Jia. Take us out.’

  +Roger that,+ their pilot replied. +Just waiting for them to clear the bay . . . Okay, bay is sealed and they’ve already star
ted depressurisation.+

  There was a hum as the electromagnets kicked in and a faint wobble as the Jonah rose off the deck, then a deeper throb as Kuai started the main engines ready for his sister to feed power to the manoeuvring rockets when the bay doors opened.

  The sound of an airlock opening made Drift look up, and Jenna’s face and its accompanying tangle of red-blonde hair appeared over the gantry.

  ‘Have they gone?’ the girl asked, her voice thick with apprehension.

  Drift gestured at the bay, empty except for the Jonah’s crew and their newly acquired cargo. ‘Yeah. You want to tell me what that was about?’

  ‘Not really,’ Jenna replied, although she appeared to relax a little.

  Drift sighed. ‘Look, I just need to know—’

  ‘You don’t need to know anything!’ she shouted, causing him to take a step back in surprise. Her mouth moved behind her lips for a moment before more words tumbled out, cutting off his half-formed sentence. ‘That’s your rule, right? You don’t ask about someone’s history unless they talk about it first? That’s what you and Tamara told me when I first came on board.’

  Actually I think we told you to let Tamara hold your hair back while you threw up, Drift thought, but decided not to voice that particular correction. ‘Well . . . yeah.’

  ‘This is my history,’ Jenna said. Her voice was level again and her eyes met his. There was no aggression there, but there was the sort of determination which was practically palpable. ‘You do not need to know it.’

  Drift nodded slowly. ‘Fair enough. But you understand that you’re a member of this crew, and that means you have responsibilities. If your reactions mean you can’t fulfil your responsibilities, then at best you won’t be flying with us for long and at worst . . .’ he shrugged, ‘you get us all killed.’