Dark Run

by Mike Brooks

  She slapped him on the jaw, as hard as she could.

  Apirana had told her once that the head was sacred to the Maori. The worst curse in the Maori language was telling someone else to ‘go boil your head and eat it’, not just for the disrespect of the original act but also the indignity of shitting it out again afterwards. To touch anyone’s head without permission was a long way from polite, but to a Maori it went far beyond that.

  Apirana’s right hand left Drift’s throat and drew back, fingers clenching into a fist roughly the size of Jenna’s head. She took a deep breath, shut her eyes and waited.

  Two seconds later, she cautiously opened them again. To her left, Drift was still on his back on the table and making a noise like a malfunctioning air- con unit as he desperately sucked in oxygen. In front of her, and far more prominent, the massive form of Apirana stood frozen in place. The big man’s face was still wild, but there was recognition in his eyes. Recognition, and desperate indecision.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jenna said quickly, ‘I’m sorry but you were going to kill him! And I don’t think you want to do that. Not really.’

  Apirana stared at her, teeth audibly grinding.

  ‘Let her go,’ Jenna said gently, nodding towards Rourke. ‘Micah’s got her gun. She won’t shoot you.’

  The big Maori just looked at her for a moment longer, then abruptly lowered his raised fist and shoved Rourke away. She fell to the floor and hit it groggily, breaking her fall with her hands but staying down.

  ‘Fuck!’ Apirana screamed. He seized the plastic seat of one of the chairs which were, like the table, welded to the canteen floor to prevent them from flying around during mid-air manoeuvres in a planet’s gravity well; there was an ugly snapping noise and he wrenched it clean off its metal base, then hurled it at the galley where it impacted with a crash of pans.

  ‘Fuck!’

  Drift’s coffee mug was seized up and shattered against the far wall a second later, leaving brown spatters where it hit. Jenna stood aside as the Maori stormed forwards, and felt the gust of air as his left arm passed within a couple of inches of her. That same arm rose up to slam a palm into the wall with a sound like a gunshot as he reached the doorway; then he was through and disappearing down the corridor, although a series of bangs and roared swearwords marked his departure towards his cabin.

  Jenna took a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart. Beside her, Drift struggled up to a sitting position, legs dangling over the edge of the table.

  ‘Thank you,’ he rasped, the wheezing tone not concealing the gratitude in his voice. ‘I thought the big bastard had my number there.’

  ‘I didn’t do it for you,’ Jenna told him, still staring at the doorway. ‘I did it for him.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Drift said, getting to his feet, ‘you still probably saved my life. How did you know he wouldn’t hit you?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Jenna admitted, ‘but A. seems to have issues about having his trust betrayed by people he sees as authority . . . or with being threatened,’ she added, nodding at Rourke who was getting back to her feet.‘He’s three times my size and I’m the youngest member of this crew. I have no authority, and I’m no threat to him.’ Plus we seem to get along well, she added silently. She was in no hurry to repeat the experience, though.

  Drift’s eyes were studying her; the mechanical one was as unreadable as always but the living one looked to be weighing her up. Then he nodded slightly. ‘Well, thank God you’ve got some brains, and guts enough to use ’em.’ He glanced over at Tamara Rourke. ‘You alright?’

  ‘I’ve been better,’ she muttered, rubbing at her neck.

  ‘Yeah, well, join the club,’ Drift told her. He looked up at the rest of the crew, eyes scanning over Micah and the Changs and coming to rest on Jenna. ‘Well? Anyone else looking to kill me?’

  His words were met with silence.

  ‘Good.’ He twisted his neck, as though still trying to iron out something damaged by Apirana’s grip, then held out his hand towards Micah. ‘The gun, please.’

  ‘That’s mine,’ Rourke said dangerously. Micah looked from one to the other, but didn’t move.

  ‘Micah,’ Drift said matter-of-factly, ‘first of all, this is my ship and I’m the Captain. Secondly, and I suspect rather more importantly so far as you’re concerned, I hid the credit chip with the remaining money on before we entered atmo. So if you want to get paid, you’ll be taking orders from me.’

  Micah pursed his lips for a second, then shrugged and tossed the one-shot underarm to Drift, who caught it deftly. Rourke’s eyes flashed, but Micah just spread his hands. ‘What? He ain’t the only one who used to take orders from Kelsier.’

  ‘He killed his old crew!’ Kuai protested.

  ‘A decade ago!’ Drift yelled, causing the mechanic to flinch away from him. ‘What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry? That I wish I hadn’t done it? Fine!’ He threw up his arms. ‘Consider it said! But if I hadn’t bailed Jia out, would you have been able to raise the cash for her? And what sort of sentence would she have got if she’d been left there?’

  ‘You’re Gabriel Drake,’ Kuai spat, ‘if you think I’m going to fly with you now . . .’ He shook his head, unable or unwilling to finish his sentence, and folded his arms defiantly.

  Drift exhaled in apparent frustration, then look at Kuai’s sister. ‘Jia?’

  The pilot looked uncertain, but stepped up beside her brother. Drift’s face fell further. ‘Micah?’

  ‘I go where the money goes,’ Micah shrugged, taking a couple of strides to stand by the Captain’s side.

  ‘You think he’ll be earning much now?’ Rourke demanded, now flanked by the Chang siblings. ‘He’s wanted twice over.’

  ‘He’s got a ship,’ Micah pointed out. ‘What’ve you got?’

  ‘A pilot, a mechanic and Apirana,’ Rourke shot back, ‘plus a slicer. Right, Jenna?’

  Every eye turned to her. Jenna had a sudden and thoroughly incongruous memory of being in an amateur dramatic performance at high school where she’d stepped out onto the stage, seen the audience and completely forgotten her lines. This was why she liked code so much, it never taxed her emotionally or asked her to make impossible decisions. Drift was Drake, and Drake was a . . . had been a feared pirate. Rourke was sensible and responsible, but Rourke had always seemed to view her as an asset: valuable, yes, but not a person to talk and laugh with. The Captain had made a real effort to make her feel at home on their ship, his recent snappiness notwithstanding.

  And then there was the non-too-small matter of the ship itself. It was Drift’s ship, and the ship was their best chance for freedom, but could he fly it without the Changs? And is it going to stay his . . .?

  The bracelet on Jenna’s left wrist chimed a warning note. She felt her cheeks burn but was grateful for the distraction; at least, until she read the text scrolling across its polished surface.

  ‘What’s that?’ Drift asked, brows lowering. ‘That’s not another—’

  ‘No,’ Jenna said, cutting him off before any of the syllables of ‘EMP’ could cross his lips, ‘it’s a processor and display unit slaved to the main terminal in the cockpit. And yes, I built it.’ She reread the words crawling over it and felt something ice-cold sink through her stomach. ‘We need to go. The Europans are pulling up protocols to detain all Carcharodon- class shuttles at anchor.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Rourke demanded. Jenna gave her a look of the sort she’d used to reserve for her brother when he was being particularly dense. It had got a lot of usage.

  ‘You hired me to slice. The Spine on any world has unregulated backchannels slicers use to distribute information, and I tapped into them as soon as we were in atmo, then set up alert tags.’ She tapped her bracelet. ‘Luckily for us, someone somewhere saw what the Europans are doing and passed the word out. I don’t know how long it will take for them to get that protocol activated, but we can’t be on the ground when they do.’

  Rourke nodde
d once, her expression grim. ‘We need to take off, then find somewhere to hole up since we can’t leave the planet at the moment. Does anyone have any contacts on Old Earth? Jia? Kuai?’

  ‘Only our parents,’ Jia replied, shaking her head, ‘and we can’t exactly hide the Jonah in their apartment.’

  ‘Micah?’ Rourke asked, but the mercenary just shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think anyone Apirana knew here would be happy to see him,’ Jenna volunteered, to a rueful nod from Rourke. ‘I could try to chase up a safe house through the slicer channels, but I wouldn’t really know where to start.’

  ‘You don’t need to,’ Drift said firmly, eyeing Rourke. ‘This is still my ship, damn it. Let’s get in the air.’ He strode forwards without waiting for a response, past Rourke and the Changs and heading out of the canteen.

  ‘And go where?’ Rourke demanded of his retreating back.

  ‘Atlantic City!’ Drift shouted over his shoulder, disappearing towards the cockpit. ‘I’ve got an idea!’

  They looked at each other for a couple of seconds. Then Rourke hissed in frustration. ‘Kuai, abort the refuelling and get the engines running. Jia, get to the stick and make sure he doesn’t try flying us out of here himself. Jenna, get on the channels and watch for anything which suggests we’ve been made. Micah, arm up and . . . shit, see if Apirana’s still even on board, and if he is, whether he’s going to go ballistic if we take off.’

  ‘What, you trust him again?’ Kuai demanded, pointing in the direction Drift had gone. Rourke scrubbed a hand across her forehead, which was about as emphatic a gesture of emotion as Jenna had ever seen the older woman make.

  ‘Damn it, I don’t know,’ Rourke admitted, ‘but trust him or not, it sounds like he has a plan. And stars help us, that’s more than I have right now.’

  ON THE FLY

  Ichabod Drift felt . . . odd.

  He’d been holding a secret in his chest for over a decade, so tightly that more than once he’d felt like the weight of it would smother him. The fear of being discovered hadn’t faded over time: if anything it had grown, because as he forged more independence and put more and more distance between him and his old life there’d been that much more to lose. When he’d staggered out of his escape pod on Ngwena III and headed for the closest speck of civilisation, he’d been resigned to getting picked up by the authorities, tried and summarily executed as Gabriel Drake, and the bitter remorse he’d felt for opening the Thirty-Six Degrees’ airlocks meant he wouldn’t have argued the sentence. He had never been lower.

  But then he’d heard the news: Gabriel Drake and his entire crew had already been killed in a heroic boarding action off Ngwena Prime. He was just another Hispanic face in the crowd, the Federation of African States’ eagerness to claim credit for his treachery providing him with a security he’d never have enjoyed had they launched a manhunt for any possible fugitives with no background story. He’d taken passage out of the system on the first transport he could find, gathered up some of the credit chips he’d carefully stashed away in a variety of secure locations, and set about using the profits from Gabriel Drake’s career as a privateer to start a new life for Ichabod Drift.

  He couldn’t get away, though, not completely. Not just because the funds to purchase the Keiko and the Jonah had come from his old life, but because his secret had been buried in his heart like a worm in an apple. How many times had he woken in fear in case he’d muttered something in his sleep which would have tipped off whoever had been lying beside him that night? How many reasons had he found never to hire someone from the FAS just in case he’d attacked a ship they’d been on, or their brother or mother or cousin had been on? How many times had he desperately wished he could tell someone, to explain what had happened? For someone to listen to the tale of his life and nod and say that yes, his hand had been forced and they would likely have made the same choices in the same situation? He’d never had the courage, though, nor what he felt would be the right audience.

  Everything was out now, though. Not out as he’d have liked it, not shared to a close confidante, but dragged out of him at gunpoint to a room of people he’d hoped were his friends but had ended up looking for someone to blame. All the same, he felt oddly . . . free.

  ‘What’s in Atlantic City?’ Tamara Rourke asked from behind him. He fought down the urge to retort sharply, to mock or to demand an apology. Jia pushed past him and dropped into the pilot’s chair, fingers darting through the preflight checks, and the sudden vibration in the floor told him that Kuai had brought the main engines online. Three people who had been in stark opposition to Gabriel Drake a minute before had fallen back into old habits because Ichabod Drift offered them a way out, and he had no intention of pushing his luck with them.

  Now he just needed it to work.

  ‘A spaceport called Star’s End,’ he replied, turning to face her. Her face still showed distrust, but she hadn’t choked him out from behind to get her gun back so he was prepared to call that a win for now. ‘It’s run by someone I used to know.’

  Rourke’s face clearly showed what she thought of people he used to know. ‘And this friend of yours will just let us hole up in his place even though the entire planet’s looking for us?’

  ‘He’s no friend,’ Drift corrected her, feeling the floor shift slightly beneath him as Jia started to take off, ‘but he owes me his life, and he’s too proud to forget that no matter how much we used to dislike each other. I don’t care how angry the Europans are, they can’t lock Old Earth up forever. The other governments might hold to it for a couple of days, tops; after that there’ll be riots if the launches don’t restart and the trade stops coming in. We lie low for a few days, then we should be able to sneak offworld.’

  ‘Star’s End?’ Jenna was already tapping at her terminal, calling up the information from the Spine. ‘Proprietor . . . Alexander Cruz?’ She looked up, doubt writ large on her face. ‘It doesn’t look very . . . nice.’

  ‘It probably isn’t,’ Drift acknowledged, ‘but it’ll be a place we can duck out of sight until the skies clear a bit, and Alex won’t tip anyone off about us.’ He tried to sound casually confident, although he was anything but. The fact remained, however, that they needed somewhere to hide and there was no purpose to be served by having his crew rebel against the only viable option.

  ‘Fine,’ Rourke nodded after a second, ‘but our conversation isn’t over.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ Drift told her, unable to keep some of the sarcasm out of his voice, ‘but let’s focus on getting out of Europa for now, shall we?’ He frowned. ‘Wait . . . what about A.?’

  Rourke grunted and activated her comm. ‘Micah? How’d it go?’

  +The big man’s still on board,+ the Dutch mercenary’s voice replied. +Either that, or his cabin’s learned how to swear at me in Maori on its own.+

  ‘Roger that,’ Rourke replied, then keyed in another frequency. ‘Kuai? How did we do on the refuel?’

  +Mostly topped up. What’s the plan now?+

  ‘The sky’s shut for the moment,’ Rourke told him, eyeing Drift, ‘but the Captain thinks he knows a place we can hide out until there’s a window.’

  +Does it have any bombs? I’ve pretty much had my fill of bombs.+

  ‘If it does, I’m going to personally shove them down his throat.’ Rourke clicked the comm off again, still looking at him. Drift decided not to rise to it.

  ‘Stations then, people,’ he said, picking up his earpiece and activating the frequency scanner once more. ‘Let’s head for Star’s End and hope we can stay off the radar.’

  They took off and flew south, over the Celtic Sea and into the stream of air traffic heading across the Atlantic Ocean from France and the Iberian Peninsula, chasing the sun westwards faster than it could travel across the sky. The channels in Drift’s ear suggested that the Europans were concentrating their searches in the north, particularly around Iceland and the Finnish border with Russia, and he was very grateful the Jonah ha
d changed direction when it did.

  The flight was a tense one. Drift half expected a hail over the radio at any moment calling on them to change course or, worse, the sudden appearance of interceptor aircraft on an attack run. Added to that was the fact that even Jia’s prodigious reserves of concentration were starting to get taxed by the long planetary approach, atmospheric entry and their various shenanigans into and out of Amsterdam, and there was still the bitter aftertaste of confrontation in the air. He found himself wired to jump into action at any moment in case someone’s temper snapped or their pilot fell asleep at the controls and, as a result, when Jia spoke up to announce they were approaching the Eastern Seaboard he nearly jumped out of his seat, half-expecting some disaster to be announced.

  ‘You okay?’ Jenna asked curiously.

  ‘Better now we’re on the final stretch,’ Drift replied honestly, trying to look like he’d been snapping to alert. He jabbed a finger at his earpiece. ‘Can you throw me over a channel for Star’s End?’

  ‘Here.’ The calltag appeared on his terminal screen. He tapped at it, activating the connection and trying to surreptitiously moisten his mouth. This was where it could all fall apart, and if his promised bolt-hole proved to be unwelcoming then he didn’t fancy his chances either with his crew or escaping the Europans. Still, there was no way he was going to take them inside without getting some assurances. The line crackled into life and a bored female voice spoke into his ear with the familiar twang of North America flavouring her words.

  +Star’s End Spaceport?+

  He carefully schooled his vowel sounds to match hers; people always reacted better to a familiar accent. ‘This is the Tamsin’s Wake requesting berthing and an open line to Alexander Cruz.’ He said it casually, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and it certainly seemed to wrong-foot the person on the other end.

  +Excuse me, sir?+

  ‘My ship requires a berth,’ Drift explained, ‘and I need to speak to Alex urgently.’ He was careful to keep his voice brisk and businesslike, and free from any patronising or belligerent tone. Someone less skilled at talking their way through obstacles might have tried to bully or shame the operator into doing what they wanted, but Drift was of the firmly held opinion that you rarely opened doors by offending people. ‘He is still running Star’s End, isn’t he?’