Dark Run

by Mike Brooks

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Drift smiled. He watched the stars wheel in front of them as Jia turned their vessel’s nose away from the gas giant they’d been orbiting. His right eye was working again, having been reactivated by a Europan medic who had some knowledge of augmentations, and it was a relief to have his full vision back. ‘First order of business: to the dead.’ He picked up a glass tumbler into which he’d measured a slug of whisky, and raised it to eye level, then paused, considering his words.

  ‘I think it’s safe to say that Micah van Schaken was a man we didn’t know well. He had his own history of which he never shared much, but we know he had been a part of the Europan Commonwealth’s Frontier Defence Unit, and left it for his own reasons.’ Now came the hard part. ‘I . . . find it hard to speak of the positives one is supposed to at times like these. Micah was not always easy company, and I can’t say he spread happiness and light wherever he went. In truth, he was more cynical than even I liked, and had a dark sense of humour. However, we don’t know his past and so we won’t judge him for how he was in the present. What I can say for him is that he was hired to fight for us, and this he did whenever asked to.’

  ‘And sometimes when he hadn’t been,’ Rourke put in. Drift glared at her, but the former agent raised her own glass. ‘Micah was more than just a grunt with a gun. He was intelligent, and he saw things others didn’t.’ She swallowed visibly and continued in a voice which, had Drift not known better, he would have thought was slightly choked by emotion. ‘The Laughing Man killed him first. That’s a compliment to Micah, in its own sick way.’

  ‘He died trying to warn us,’ Apirana rumbled, raising a glass of water. ‘I’ve known mercs that would’ve run for it once they realised they’d walked into an ambush. Micah din’t.’

  ‘He never called me for cheating at cards,’ Kuai added,‘even when I think he knew.’ He looked around at the rest of them. ‘What? I don’t cheat you guys!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Jenna told him, ‘we know no one could be as bad as you if they were cheating.’

  ‘See?’ Kuai paused, then frowned. ‘Hey!’

  The young slicer’s smile faded as she lifted her own glass. ‘I . . . didn’t know Micah as well as the rest of you, and hadn’t known him for as long. I will say that you always knew where you stood with him. He was one of the most honest people I’ve ever met; he didn’t try to make himself out to be a nicer or better person than he was.’

  All eyes turned to Jia. The pilot swivelled around in her chair, picked up her glass and eyed it thoughtfully. She opened her mouth as if to speak, closed it again, then nodded decisively.

  ‘He was great in bed.’

  There was a stunned silence for a second before Jia burst into uproarious laughter. ‘Your faces . . .!’

  Kuai looked like he was about to have a fit. ‘What . . . that’s not funny!’

  ‘Do I look like I’m joking?’ Jia grinned at him. ‘Hell yeah, it’s true! We just kept it quiet. Don’t mean you don’t all look like brain-dead goldfish!’

  Drift snorted. ‘Well, then: to Micah!’ He sank his whisky and waited for the others to do the same. Kuai muttered darkly under his breath in Mandarin and Jenna was still staring at Jia in apparent shock, but they finally followed suit.

  ‘Second order of business: to the living,’ Drift continued. ‘This has probably been the biggest mess I’ve been caught up in since I packed in my last career, and it’s obvious I made a few bad calls along the way. Micah knew the risks, but it was still my scheme that got him killed; my scheme which saw Jenna trapped in a ship with a bunch of pirates and terrorists; my scheme which got Kuai shot in the leg and Apirana shot in the kidney, and me nearly strangled to death. And as Tamara has pointed out to me already,’ he added, nodding towards Rourke, ‘it was my call that set this whole circus in motion in the first place. So here we are, with Kelsier no longer a threat and, yeah, the Europans might not be too pleased with us once Rybak reports back and finds out that we tricked her, but there’s a lot of galaxy that they don’t own.

  ‘What I’m getting around to is that, while I wouldn’t want to lose any of you, I’d understand if you might want to jump ship now things have quietened down a bit. Now, I’m not going to be making any major detours in order to drop you off, but what we do have, hopefully, is some profits to share out before you make your choice.’ He nodded towards Jenna. ‘Miss McIlroy?’

  Jenna held up the small drive which Drift had plugged into Kelsier’s mainframe. Its most immediate use had been to search for and erase any reference to the Keiko, the Jonah or any of them by name, just in case the Europans had wanted to comb through for data there and then, but it had a backup function as well. ‘Moment of truth, folks.’

  She inserted it into her terminal’s access port and danced her fingers across the interface, then sat back and waited. Drift watched in concern as her lips pursed slightly and her eyebrows lowered.

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘I’m just wondering whether we should collate them all or simply take an account each,’ Jenna replied, a slow smile spreading over her face.

  ‘Say what?’ Drift found himself standing behind her chair without any memory of crossing the intervening space, but the lines of text on the screen didn’t make any immediate sense to him.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the Keiko,’ Jenna announced grandly, ‘Nicolas Kelsier had several accounts set up in different places across the galaxy to draw on at his convenience . . . and we have the access codes for all of them.’

  Drift blinked. The numbers had suddenly jumped into focus, and they spoke to him in a language he liked very much. He beckoned Rourke over. ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Tamara Rourke studied the screen for a moment, then reached out a dark, slim finger to tap one of the highest figures. ‘I think the Rassvet System. It’s Red Star territory, a nice long way from any Europans who might come nosing around. Besides, your Russian needs some work.’

  ‘Right you are.’ Drift drew himself up, feeling as though a warm glow was suffusing him. Sure, his jaw hurt like hell and an entire government conglomerate might be interested in hunting him down (well, technically two, if the Federation of African States ever got wind he was still alive), but he was rich.

  All he had to do was go and get it.

  ‘Pilot!’ he declaimed with a flourish.‘To the Rassvet System!’

  ‘Aye, Captain!’ Jia shocked him by making a passable attempt at a salute, then spun around in her chair to start programming the nav computer. Apirana grinned and fist-bumped Drift on his way out of the cockpit, with a still-muttering Kuai trailing him like an undersized Chinese shadow. Rourke moved away to take up the co-pilot’s seat next to Jia, and Drift was left standing at the back of Jenna’s chair.

  ‘So how did your Europan friend like her introduction to the world of galactic espionage?’ he asked.

  ‘Sara?’ Jenna smiled slightly. ‘I think it was all a little . . . hectic for her. She was very eager to get back onto a Europan ship in the end. I think she missed her quiet little surveillance job.’

  ‘I’ll bet,’ Drift chuckled, then sobered. ‘How about you? How’s the girl from Franklin Major coping?’

  ‘Franklin Minor,’ Jenna corrected him absentmindedly. She sighed. ‘I’ll tell you this, Captain, I never want to have to do something like that again. I mean, spending hours on a shuttle wondering if you’re going to be captured and killed or . . . or worse . . . that’s not anything I want to live through a second time. Or having to open a hangar bay to a vacuum and kill some men to prevent them from trying to blow their way into a shuttle to come and get me. I’d never killed anyone before today, or yesterday, or whenever it was now. I don’t like it.’

  ‘I understand,’ Drift replied, his heart sinking. ‘So this means you’ll be wanting to go your own way once you’ve got your share of the profits?’

  Jenna turned to face him. ‘Hell no!’

  Drift frowned, pleased but puzzled.‘But I thought�
�’

  He was cut off by Jenna standing up and jabbing him in the chest. ‘It means that next time, we plan this shit properly!’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I will start my acknowledgements with an apology. I’ve portrayed many nationalities and cultures in this depiction of the future, but Apirana Wahawaha the Maori is probably the most notable and detailed, yet the furthest from my own direct experience. Apirana himself was inspired by another Maori character created many years ago by my friend Will, and I am indebted to Will for allowing me to use elements of that creation in my novel. However, even allowing for the centuries between us and the adventures of the Keiko, I’m sure I have got things wrong regarding Apirana and his background: terms, language or details of culture. I apologise to any and all of the Maori people should my writing inadvertently offend through inaccuracy or ignorance, and I hope any such flaws may be overlooked (or even better, corrected: you can find me on the internet).

  With that out of the way, thanks go first to my agent Rob Dinsdale without whom this all would have been, if not strictly impossible, at the very least highly improbable. Until he took me on I didn’t fully appreciate the level of assistance a good agent provides.

  Thanks also go to the Crown Prince of Grimdark, Luke Scull, who put me in touch with Rob in the first place. Projectile weapons and a nuclear bomb, and I’m still nowhere near your bodycount.

  Massive thanks to Michael, Emily, and everyone else at Del Rey UK for the fantastic work put into making this book a reality. The feedback, the advice, the awesome cover art . . . all of it. It means a hell of a lot to have people investing so much in stories I made up in my head.

  Thanks to Ande for help with the Spanish when Drift decides that one language just isn’t enough. Any errors in translation are mine, not his. Thanks to Carrie for pointing out that New Shinjuku was probably a stupid name for a planet (even though I decided to use it anyway). Thanks to Delwyn for letting me know that a Maori accent is not necessarily the same as a New Zealand accent, and providing me with useful links. Legend.

  Thanks to my parents for ensuring I grew up in a house full of books, even if they always seemed mildly perplexed at my choice of reading material.

  Thanks to Blaise, for being on the other end of a messenger program to bounce ideas off and for being my general writing partner-in-crime. Thanks also to anyone else who read and gave me feedback on any drafts of this novel, at whatever stage.

  Thanks to you, the reader of these acknowledgements, for buying this book. Assuming you bought it. If you didn’t buy it, but you enjoyed it, maybe consider buying the next one? Cat food and pre-frozen rodents don’t grow on trees, you know, and I have mouths to feed.

  Finally, and most importantly, thanks to my wife Janine for not being the least bit bothered by my tendency over the last couple of years to disappear upstairs and spend a lot of time inventing worlds, for co-owning our awesome pets, for being supportive without being intrusive, and for generally being amazing.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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  Copyright © Mike Brooks, 2015

  Mike Brooks has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  This edition published in 2015 by Del Rey

  www.eburypublishing.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780091956646

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mike Brooks was born in Ipswich, England, and moved to Nottingham to study at Nottingham Trent University and never left.

  He started to write stories and novels in childhood, has worked for a homeless charity since 2004, and when not working or writing he goes walking in the Peak District, sings and plays guitar in a punk band, and DJs wherever anyone will tolerate him.

  He is married, and has two cats and two snakes.

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