Dark Run

by Mike Brooks

  +Uh, yes sir,+ the operator replied, uncertainty still audible, +but Mr Cruz is not available to take incoming calls.+

  ‘I quite understand,’ he said reassuringly, ‘and believe me, I wouldn’t ask unless it was very important.’ He hesitated, but he didn’t have many options. ‘I’ll tell you what: could you please contact him and tell him that Gabriel needs to talk to him about Tantalus? If he won’t take my call, I won’t trouble you any further.’

  +I . . . Very well, one moment, sir.+

  ‘Tantalus?’ Jenna asked, looking up.

  ‘It’s a planet,’ Drift shrugged casually, muting his headset’s microphone,‘someone named it that because parts of it look green from orbit and scientists originally went loopy about finding extraterrestrial life, but then it turned out to just be some chemical element in the mud, or something. I pulled Alex’s bacon out of the fire there once, although he won’t thank me for reminding him about it.’

  ‘Won’t she just come back and say that he still doesn’t want to talk to you?’ Jia put in, without looking around. ‘You gave her an easy out there.’

  ‘I gave her a way to pass the responsibility on without either putting me straight through or ditching a call her boss might actually want to take,’ Drift said, eyeing the approaching New Jersey coastline of steel and concrete. ‘That is the easy out.’

  ‘You want me to start taking her down anyway?’ Jia asked, starting to swing their nose towards the towering blocks with dancing, metres-high advertisements blazing out across the ocean at them.

  ‘Hold until I get a reply,’ Drift told her. Now the pilot did look over her shoulder at him.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve had me fly us here and—’

  ‘After what’s just happened, let’s make sure this is a safe place,’ Drift cut her off. ‘Alex is a bastard, but if he says he’ll shelter us, then he’ll shelter us. If I don’t get that assurance, we may be better off taking our chances elsewhere.’ His comm buzzed and he activated the connection again before Jia could retort. ‘Hello?’

  +This is Alexander Cruz. Who’s speaking?+

  ‘Alex, you know very well who it is,’ Drift said, losing the New Jersey accent and putting an edge into his voice. Cruz wasn’t a bored bay coordinator who needed buttering up; the man had always been steel and ice wrapped in a curious moral code who wouldn’t budge unless he was pushed, and Drift doubted that would have changed now he owned some real estate and a superficially legal business. Besides which . . .

  There was a pause.

  +You’re dead.+

  The words weren’t a threat. The tone was that of a man who was struggling to believe the evidence of his own ears.

  ‘Then you’ve just become a fucking medium, congratulations,’ Drift snapped, the sound of Cruz’s voice triggering old memories and bringing Gabriel Drake’s old vocal mannerisms back to the surface. He didn’t try to suppress them; he needed the other man to believe him, and quickly. ‘I’ve got a ship I need landing, and I could do with some coffee too.’ He saw Jenna’s eyebrows quirk, but ignored her for now.

  +Listen, whoever you are—+

  ‘Alex, shut the fuck up,’ Drift spoke over the other man’s attempted indignation. ‘You owe me a favour and I’m calling it in. I don’t expect you to like it, and I give you my word I will be out of your hair as soon as I can and everything between us will be square, but until that time don’t try to fob me off by pretending I’m not who I say I am.’

  +Sweet shitting Jesus. It really is you, isn’t it?+

  Drift felt a grin spread across his face, although he was careful to keep it from creeping into his voice.

  ‘Now you’re getting the idea.’

  There was another pause for a few seconds.

  +I suppose you’d best come down then. I’ll find you a mug.+

  STAR’S END

  Star’s End Spaceport occupied a large, flat area which might have been a bay or lagoon of some sort long ago, before the water was pumped or diverted away and the whole thing surfaced over. The port itself was a multilayered affair, with curved walls which made it look a little like an enormous sports stadium from the exterior and served to contain the blast from any catastrophic accidents. As the Jonah crawled into position over it, Drift saw the other purpose of those walls: berth bays were built into them, like the comb of an enormous beehive or, perhaps, a vast wine rack. There was a steady chatter over his earpiece as ships of varying sizes were given clearance to take off or land in certain sectors, all activity monitored to minimise the possibility of two vessels attempting to fly through the same piece of air at once.

  ‘This is huge,’ Jenna commented, peering out of a viewport. ‘Even Franklin Major doesn’t have anything like this.’

  ‘There’s ports like this all over the continent,’ Jia snorted. ‘Every continent, really. Well, not so many in Africa, but then they’ve got the space elevator.’ She checked her read-outs, then tapped the internal commswitch. ‘Okay people, we’re heading down. Hope you’re not claustrophobic.’ A couple of seconds later the Jonah started to sink, swivelling in the air as Jia prepared to fly backwards into their assigned berth – carefully, or so Drift hoped.

  ‘What was the “coffee” thing about?’ Jenna asked him as the walls rose up above them.

  ‘Mmm? Oh, it’s a code. Or was a code, anyway,’ Drift corrected himself. ‘People like Alex and me used to use it, along with the ports we tended to dock in. If the authorities were after you and you needed somewhere to lie low then you’d head for someone you knew – and you’d only ever be offered sanctuary by someone you knew – and ask for help. But there’s no point announcing it over an open channel, of course, so when you hailed them you’d ask for a drink when you got down. It didn’t matter what it was, so long as it wasn’t alcoholic.’

  ‘And if they said you could have some, then you were okay?’ Jenna asked. Drift smiled and shook his head.

  ‘No. If they said they’d get you a cup, a mug, a glass or whatever, then you were okay. If they ignored you or responded with anything else, even if they said you could have some but didn’t mention anything to put it in, then you either wouldn’t be safe there or wouldn’t be welcome. Probably both.’

  ‘Sounds like a decent system,’ Jia commented. ‘Ever get any mix-ups?’

  ‘Not really,’ Drift replied. ‘Like I said, no one would give sanctuary to someone they didn’t know, and if you knew them then they’d know the code. It worked well.’

  ‘Do people still use it?’ Jenna asked. Drift shrugged.

  ‘Not sure. I honestly don’t know where most of those people are now, except Alex.’

  ‘Everyone quiet,’ Jia ordered, halting their descent, ‘this is the tricky part.’

  Star’s End had various sizes of docking berth, and the one they’d been assigned looked uncomfortably narrow to Drift’s eyes. Jia backed them in slowly, muttering under her breath in Mandarin and with her eyes flickering from one sensor read-out to another. There was a brief outbreak of hissed swearing at one point when something beeped urgently at her, but to Drift’s delight – and mild surprise – she managed to get them in and set them down without hitting the walls.

  No sooner had the main drive powered down than a thick steel security door began to lower across the entrance to the bay.

  ‘Well, that’s not at all worrying,’ Jenna said uncertainly.

  ‘It’s standard,’ Drift assured her. ‘The doors protect the bays from any accidents outside or someone trying to fly into the wrong one, plus in this case it means no one can see in and work out who we are.’ As if in response to his words – although more likely the growing darkness as the door continued its crawl downwards – lights flickered on inside the bay. ‘Seriously, nothing to worry about.’ He felt a small shiver of relief run through him. Finally, his feet were more or less on solid ground again and he wasn’t reliant on other crew members to pilot or slice him out of trouble. Oh, there were problems hanging over his head, but right now he
was back in the realm of dealing with people, and people was where he excelled.

  The comm buzzed. +Attention Tamsin’s Wake, this is Star’s End security. Power down all engines and prepare for docking inspection in two minutes.+

  ‘Roger that, Star’s End,’ Drift replied easily, ‘our drives are already inactive and we’ll have the doors open for you.’ He got up out of his seat and stretched. ‘Okay people, let’s go and meet our hosts.’

  ‘You mean I don’t get to sleep yet?’ Jia grumbled.

  ‘Not quite,’ Drift told her. ‘Go round up your brother and bring him down to the cargo hold. I want everyone front and centre for this.’

  ‘So they can shoot us all at the same time,’ Jia muttered, but she stripped off her piloting gloves and headed out of the cockpit. Drift cocked an eyebrow at Jenna.

  ‘On your feet, Tech Officer.’

  ‘Tech Officer?’ Jenna snorted, obeying.

  ‘Hell, I figure you need a title beyond “slicer”,’ Drift shrugged as she followed him out of the cockpit back down to the cargo bay where they were greeted by the sight of what scrap metal hadn’t fallen into the ocean when the bomb doors had opened, and Rourke and Micah rooting through it.

  ‘I thought we’d better check to see if there was any sort of tracking device hidden in here,’ Rourke said in answer to their unspoken query.

  ‘Anything?’ Drift asked, although he was sure he’d have already heard if there had been.

  ‘Nothing,’ Micah snorted, ‘the other three crates were all just scrap.’ He exhaled noisily through his nose and looked over at Drift. ‘So what’s our play now?’

  ‘Right now, we’re about to be visited by a security inspection which I suspect will be led by Alexander Cruz,’ Drift told them. Rourke immediately reached for her Crusader, and Drift winced. ‘I really don’t think that’s necessary.’

  Rourke’s eyes were cool as she pulled her hat down over them. ‘I don’t fancy any more surprises, Ichabod. I’d like to hear what this friend of yours has to say.’

  ‘I told you he wasn’t a friend,’ Drift warned. Rourke shrugged.

  ‘All the more reason to have a gun to hand.’

  ‘No,’ Drift said, surprising even himself with the sternness in his voice. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Micah stiffen slightly. ‘This man owes me a favour. They’ve sealed the bay off, which is standard practice but also means we’re locked behind a steel door in the middle of his spaceport. We are here on his sufferance and his sense of honour, which is probably not outweighing his sense of trouble by all that much, at the moment.’ He nodded at Rourke’s trusty rifle. ‘Let’s not give him a reason to decide we’re not worth the hassle.’

  Rourke studied him for a couple of seconds, face blank, then blinked and laid the weapon carefully back against the wall. ‘Fine.’

  Drift concealed his sigh of relief and turned to face the Chang siblings as they walked in. ‘Security inspection, Kuai.’

  ‘Good job we’ve already offloaded the illegal military hardware, hey?’ Kuai grunted. Drift spared him a moment’s glare, then saw the shadow growing in the corridor behind him. A second later Apirana’s huge frame loomed into view, towering over the Changs. Drift tried not to look at the big man’s massive hands as he felt the ghost of them clasped around his neck and met Apirana’s eyes instead, or attempted to: the Maori looked away after a second, shoulders hunched.

  ‘Where are we?’ Apirana muttered, shoving his hands into the pockets of his flight suit.

  ‘Atlantic City,’ Drift answered him, breathing a little more easily. He could deal with Apirana later. Currently there was a more pressing concern, and he turned to face the front of the bay as a buzzing noise indicated that someone outside was requesting entry. ‘Everyone try not to look too suspicious.’

  ‘Now he tells us,’ Jia drawled. Drift ignored her and walked over to key in the release code, then stepped back and held his breath.

  The seals detached and the loading ramp groaned downwards, meeting the floor with a clank. The bay outside was lined in metal so the mags of a ship could gain a purchase and a pilot wouldn’t have to control the beast by thrusters alone, and was otherwise bare: understandable, given that the level of heat thrown out by a ship’s thrusters would damage pretty much anything it touched.

  Bare, that was, apart from the group of men and women arrayed at the bottom of the ramp. There were half a dozen of them in sober, dark blue uniforms, each one with a tazer gun cradled loosely in their hands and stun batons at their belts; clearly the security force. Drift’s quick scan over their faces suggested they were relaxed and possibly a little bored, and there was no sign of the sudden rush he’d half been fearing which would have doubtless ended with the Jonah’s crew eventually being handed over to the Europan authorities.

  The man slightly in front of them looked far from relaxed, however. Alexander Cruz was a far cry from the dashing rake of a man Drift had known a decade ago, and if it was strange to see him in the calf-high black boots, black breeches and crisp white shirt he’d apparently decided was to be his uniform as the spaceport’s owner and manager, then it was even stranger to see him with a gut and the hint of a double chin. His eyes met Drift’s and his face tightened a little, but he stepped away from his escort and advanced up the ramp on his own. He jerked his head at Drift, indicating he should move towards the rest of his crew. Drift obliged, happy to be out of sight and hopefully earshot of the security detail.

  Cruz clearly still wasn’t one for pleasantries. He stopped about ten feet away from the loose line of the Jonah’s crew, his cold dark eyes flickering from one to another of the ragged group that could have hardly contrasted more starkly with his uniformed team. His eyes barely rested on Drift even as he addressed him without preamble.

  ‘What am I even supposed to call you these days?’

  ‘Ichabod Drift will do fine,’ Drift replied levelly.

  ‘What sort of a name is that?’ Cruz snorted.

  ‘Less well known than the alternative,’ Drift pointed out. ‘You’re looking well,’ he added, in an attempt to steer the conversation elsewhere. It was true: Alexander Cruz still carried himself smoothly and easily despite the weight gain, and his skin held the tan of a man who got out into the comparatively benign light of Old Earth’s sun on a regular basis.

  ‘You look like shit,’ Cruz replied baldly, ‘but then if I’d just dropped a nuke in the Europans’ backyard I’d probably be crapping rocket fuel too.’

  Drift suppressed a sudden urge to shiver. ‘That’s an interesting allegation.’

  ‘Don’t try to play me for a fool when you’re taking advantage of an old favour, Drift,’ Cruz snorted. ‘You’ve been off-radar for a decade or more. I thought you were dead; everyone thought you were dead. You’ve kept a low profile for a reason. You’d only show your face after all this time to someone who’d know it if you were out of options and desperate. You’ve got a ship to take you away from trouble, so I figure you just can’t risk making orbit in case you get snatched . . . which means you’re the one the Europans are looking for.’

  Drift shrugged as lazily as he could manage. The man had always been smart even if not always sensible in his youth, and there was no point irritating him with further denials. ‘And is this common knowledge?’

  ‘No,’ Cruz said, rolling his eyes, ‘that’s why my team are staying outside and are not party to this conversation, because they owe you nothing and I can’t trust someone not to try getting a reward out of this. There’s a description out on your craft, of course, but given there must be a few thousand Carcharodon-class shuttles in the sky over North America at any one time, that won’t help the authorities much.’ His eyebrows lowered into a scowl. ‘I don’t know what you do for a living these days, and I don’t care. I have a business, and it’s legal. God help me, I owe you for Tantalus, but you are gone from here within an hour of the USNA relaxing the launch restrictions for this continent. Am I clear?’

  ‘Perfect
ly,’ Drift nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  The portmaster pursed his lips. ‘Okay then. Don’t draw attention to yourselves: I won’t rat on you, but if the Justices come asking questions I’ll just be handing over the arrival log and I won’t be taking any chances to tip you off that they’re on their way.’

  ‘Understood,’ Drift assured him. Cruz stood there for another second or so, then nodded decisively.

  ‘Well, I have a spaceport to run.’ Those cold eyes met his once more. ‘Goodbye, Mr Drift. I hope not to see you again.’ He turned on his heel and strode away without another word, leaving Drift and his crew standing.

  ‘You saved his life?’ Jenna asked quietly as Cruz disappeared from view.

  ‘I did,’ Drift acknowledged.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,’ Drift snorted. ‘And to be fair, I suppose it paid off in the end. This is the only spaceport we could expect to hide out in without difficult questions being asked.’ He exhaled noisily, pulling his thoughts into order. ‘Right. We’re down and we’re hidden, but we don’t know how long we’ve got before Alex gives us our marching orders. So, when the time comes for us to move, we need to have worked out exactly how we’re going to nail Nicolas Kelsier.’

  FIGHTING TALK

  There was a stunned silence for a second or so, and then the shouting started. Drift let it rise around him for a few moments before raising both hands and allowing some of Gabriel Drake’s tone to creep back into his voice.

  ‘Quiet!’

  The added sharp edge worked; even Tamara Rourke closed her mouth again, although the look she shot him suggested that it was more from surprise than anything else. He let the sudden stillness hang in the air for a moment, just to ensure everyone’s attention was properly focused on him. Other people might have found that expectation daunting, but not Ichabod Drift. Wherever he’d been, whatever name he’d adopted, he’d always used the same tool to get by.