After the bulkheads were hefted into place, they were welded to the deck and overhead—then another crew entered with long, narrow planks of thermoplastic and welded them as some sort of shelving to the interior of the new compartment.
It was perplexing Avrel, because nearly all cargo came aboard already in its own chests and containers, usually sealed by the shipper—or Captain Morell himself if it was a cargo he’d bought for company profit. He’d never seen anything that needed its own compartments and shelving, especially such odd shelving, for these ran the full length of the compartment and from deck to overhead, with less than a third of a meter between them. The space in each compartment’s center was barely enough for a man to enter and turn around in.
He sighed and lowered his arms as the last of the preliminary welds were completed on his current bulkhead. It would stay in place now, but it was time to move on to the next.
He closed his eyes for just a moment, jaw clamped tight against the nausea and willing his head to stop its pounding for a just a moment, if it pleased.
“Mister Hobler!” Kaycie called out.
Avrel hoped it might be a bit of a break, though it was early for that, but Kaycie had a kind heart and she’d know many of the crew were feeling poorly after their night’s liberty on Kuriyya’s surface. Avrel himself had found himself bundled up by Hobler’s mates as they made the rounds of the port to collect any of the crew who’d overindulged the night before.
He remembered going upstairs with the girl and then there’d been more drink and … well, what one did with such girls … he supposed … the whole of it was a bit blurry in his recollection, if he were honest.
The morning—afternoon, really—was clear. He’d been fast asleep, in one of a row of chairs in the house’s kitchen, propped between two other spacers who’d not had the wherewithal to leave on their own when their business was done. Luckily it was Hext in charge of the party collecting him and not Bridgeford, for Hext had a bit of a heart. He’d not had any of his crew deliver an extra blow or two as they dumped Avrel onto their antigrav cart with two other moaning Minorcas and trundled the lot back to the landing field.
Other than that, the night before was a jumbled mess of images, half-remembered sounds, and more than a few sensations he really did wish he could remember better …
He flushed at what memories he did have, though, for there was a fuzzy image of nuzzling into warm, soft skin while murmuring Kaycie’s name. The girl’d been understanding, playing along as he was sure she’d done a thousand times with others, but it was still an embarrassing memory for him to —
“See to it that man understands the time for his daydreams was on leave and not while there’s ship’s work to be done!”
“Aye, miss!” Hobler called.
Avrel yelped as something struck his head with a dull thud.
He opened his eyes to find Bridgeford grinning at him, his starter—a short length of ship’s line, knotted at one end—raised for another blow.
“Not to the head, Bridgeford!” Kaycie yelled. “That one’s addled enough as it is!”
Avrel took in Bridgeford’s glee, Hobler’s stern glare, and, perplexing as to why, Kaycie’s own narrowed eyes and thin lips. Bloody hell, but what’d he done to upset her so and have her set the quartermaster’s mates on him?
He yelped again as Bridgeford’s starter thudded into his backside.
“Aye, miss!” he called, and hurriedly moved on to where the next bulkhead waited to be put into place. “Working, miss!”
Lunch with his messmates was a surly, growling affair.
Avrel’s stomach alternated between rumbling demands for food and balking as each bite arrived, the clatter and muted voices from the other messes did nothing for his head, and his back and buttocks ached from more than one well-placed blow of Bridgeford’s starter. He seethed a bit at that last, for Kaycie’d seemed to take a perverse glee in pointing him out every time he slacked or slowed in the work.
And truly he hadn’t slacked that much after the first blows. He’d kept his wits about him, but she’d called him out for every bit of a breather he’d taken, and Bridgeford’d made it his mission to be well-placed for the calls.
What the bloody hell had he done to displease her so? It was not as though they’d so much as spoken since that first meeting in her cabin. Other than orders and niceties there was little reason for common crew such as himself to have words with a ship’s officer, certainly not private ones, so their contact had been necessarily limited.
Yet all day she’d been glaring at him every time he glanced at her and setting him a beating at every opportunity.
He took another bite, chewing slowly in the hopes his stomach would take the warning that more was coming and prepare itself better than the last.
Opposite him and Grubbs at the narrow table they shared, which folded down from the bulkhead on which their narrow bunks were stacked four-high, Sween and Detheridge bumped elbows and Detheridge swore as a few drops of her grog ration spilled from her cup.
“Watch yourself!”
“You watch yer own bloody self!” Sween shot back.
Detheridge swapped her mug to her off hand and drove an elbow into Sween’s side.
“I’ll watch you buggered if you don’t mind your space!” she said.
Sween turned toward her on his share of the bench and looked to draw his arm back for a real blow.
“What’s into you two?” Avrel demanded. “Knock it off—I’ve had enough attention from Hobler’s mates today, damn you!”
Detheridge and Sween turned their ire across the table.
“And aren’t we painted with your idling brush, as well?” Detheridge asked. “You think Bridgeford’ll not be watching all of us, now he knows you’ve gone and pissed in the little miss’ grog?”
“And how’d you manage that, lad?” Sween asked. “She’s been fair as can be since she come aboard, but now she’s started a shit-list, sure. And it’s your name all the bloody way down.”
“I wish I knew,” Avrel muttered.
“Well find out and fix it, boy,” Detheridge said. “Things are bad enough without we’re splattered with your leavings.”
Avrel frowned.
“What’s bad enough?” he asked. “And what’s got into you two, as well, with your squabbling?” He turned to Grubbs, who’d spent the whole of the meal with downcast eyes, shoveling food into his mouth and speaking nary a word. “And you, you’re silent as well.” His whole mess was out of sorts and had been for the entire day. He, at least, had the excuse of far too much drink the night before, but the other three weren’t known for excess in that. He’d never seen them come back from leave so out of sorts before. “What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter?” Detheridge hissed.
Grubbs raised his head just long enough to say, “He’s not sailed the Barbary with a Marchant like this before, Deth. He don’t know what to look for. Look around—half the crew don’t know, and half’re happy as clams to be in it.”
Avrel did just that, looked around and saw that many of the crew were as sullen and downcast as his mates, while others were grinning and chiding them for it. Still, the larger number was those who looked perplexed at the whole business.
Detheridge eased in her seat, though she still looked angry. “Aye, I’ll allow that—so, you see, boy, it’s—”
“Can we say?” Sween asked, cutting her off. “I mean, the contract —”
“The contract says we’re not to talk about Marchant business off the ship,” Grubbs said.
“Well, we’re not off the bloody ship, are we, and he’ll know soon enough.”
Avrel just looked from one to the other as they spoke, becoming curiouser. He assumed they meant the contract they’d all signed to come aboard, which had provisions for keeping Marchant business private. None of them were to speak of it to anyone off the ship—not their cargoes, their destinations, nothing—on pain of their shares being forfeit, or even
clawed back years later, after they were paid off. Those shares were why spacers sailed with Marchant, in large part, and why Marchant had so few spacers leave for greener pastures. A piddling percentage of each cargo, to be sure, but large in comparison to a spacer’s wages—and paid only when each contract was up.
Subject to forfeit if a man didn’t serve out his full term or, as Sween pointed out, if he violated any of the terms—discretion about Marchant business being foremost.
Avrel had paid little attention to that clause when signing aboard.
As I’ll bring every bloody word of their business I may to Eades and hope he chokes them with it.
“So, what is the matter?” he asked. “And how can you be so sure, as Captain Morell’s made no announcement about what’s to come?”
“There’s only one cargo needs compartments like that,” Detheridge muttered.
Sween nodded.
“Minorca’s going bloody slaver.”
3
At first Avrel couldn’t quite believe their revelation.
He’d heard that slavery was still practiced in the Barbary, of course, but hadn’t really credited it. There were all sorts of stories about the Barbary, after all, just as there were all sorts of stories about some of the odder Fringe worlds—many might have a grain of truth, but were likely exaggerated for the most part.
Still, he couldn’t quite see how it could go on here, surrounded as the area was by New London, the French Republic, Hso-Hsi, and even Hanover—there were stories enough about the latter, too, but nothing to suggest they’d condone such a thing in what was, ostensibly, their own territory.
Then there was the economics of it. His own training at Lesser Sibward and aboard his family’s ships had taught him what a powerful motivator money was, but also that there were some things there was no money in. Or little enough to make it not worth the trouble.
Just look at the shipping alone. For Minorca to fill her hold and sail across the Barbary, it’d be the same cost whether the cargo was men or machines—less, for the machines wouldn’t have to be fed or guarded. He thought about the sheer logistics of having a hold full of people and balked at the cost. Machines could do any labor far more efficiently, so why bother with men?
He shook his head.
“This makes no sense,” he said. “To what purpose? Machines to do virtually any work would be more cost effective and less trouble, even leaving off the risk of it becoming known.”
His messmates were looking at him oddly.
“I mean, it’s horrible, of course,” he said, and felt that, but his first thoughts were to how this information could harm the Marchants and what use Eades could make of it. He wanted to be certain of the matter before rushing to message Eades, as well. “You’re not speaking of indentures?”
The fringe worlds’ indenture system might look like slavery to some, but it was really more of a debt system—and, except convicts or those taken up for debts already owed, it was voluntary. One sold several years of one’s labor for the upfront cost of transport to a colony world in need of one’s skills, or simply more population. It was no different than borrowing the money for property or an aircar, really.
“No, not indenture, boy,” Detheridge said. “It’s outright chattel for these folk.”
“But … why?”
“The Barbary’s got worlds more isolated than the farthest Fringe planet,” Sween said, and the others nodded. “Kuriyya was just the edge of it, close to others, even. Most of this space has so little to offer there’re few who’ll wish to go.”
“And less to be brought back,” Grubbs said. “Not much in the way of coin in the first place.”
“A proper machine, for nearly any work, would take up less space in the hold than twice as many men,” Avrel said. He still couldn’t help but think they were wrong—or overreacting to something quite a bit more innocent than they described. “Where’s the value in —?”
“Some machine has the cost of a hundred men,” Grubbs said, “but one part breaks and there’s a hundred men’s labor gone.” He shrugged. “One man breaks and there’s still ninety-nine at the work.”
Sween nodded. “Some company like Marchant comes in and they have the coin to do a thing right from the start, but a couple miners with a hard-scrabble claim far from it all?” He shrugged as well. “May not be the smartest, but it is what it is.”
Detheridge glared at her plate and said, quietly, “Then there’s the things men don’t want no machine for.”
Sween laid a hand on her shoulder, which surprised Avrel, as he’d never seen her take comfort from one of them like that, nor the others offer it.
“We’ll hope it’s none of that,” Sween said.
Detheridge shook her head. “There’s always some of that.” She drained her mug. “I may be off next leave, lads.”
Minorca was due to stay in orbit around Kuriyya until the work in the hold was complete, and then it’d been announced they’d have one more night’s leave on the surface before she sailed. This had puzzled Avrel from the start, for it wasn’t in any shipper’s interest to stay idle around a planet longer than necessary. The work in the hold could have easily been completed while underway in darkspace.
“There’s more than one won’t come back,” Grubbs agreed. “Lost shares or no.”
Avrel frowned. “How does no one know about this? The government wouldn’t stand for such a thing, Barbary or no. A New London flagged ship would never —” He broke off. There was nothing the Marchants wouldn’t do, he suspected, if there was a farthing in it for them, and he well knew the influence they could place on those in government. Money talked in many places.
“Which of us’ll speak out, even if we did run?” Detheridge asked. “You? Have you read your contract? Libel, slander, defamation, a slew of other things all come down to keep your bloody mouth shut or the Marchants’ll ruin you—damages on top of they’ll claw back every share you’ve ever been paid if you speak of company business. It means debt and indenture for your whole bloody family, just for the fees to defend the bloody case and never mind who wins. Who’ll risk that?” She drained her mug. “Pay’s good, though.”
“Aye,” the others agreed, but with dark looks. “There’s that.”
The work on the hold finished, Morell announced, as Avrel’s mates predicted, a further night’s stay in orbit around Kuriyya and leave for all the crew. There were darker looks and fewer cheers than had greeted the leave granted when Minorca first arrived.
Avrel scanned the crowd when he exited Minorca’s boat. For once, he wished to see some peddler-boy single him out with Eades’ codeword, but there was none—only the same offers as when last they’d landed.
He caught sight of Kaycie at the boat’s forward ramp, exiting with Morell and Turkington, but though she glared at him, he couldn’t seem to catch her eye enough to indicate he must speak with her. Hard as it was to speak privately aboard ship, she seemed to be almost deliberately avoiding him these last few days—at least when she wasn’t setting Hobler or his mates after him for some imagined slacking.
He’d given little thought to what might have got into her, though, as he pondered how to get a message to Eades. They’d not set up any sort of method for that, relying on Eades’ network to contact Avrel instead. There’d been no indication until now that Avrel might have information on the Marchants that couldn’t wait to be communicated—now, though, if Eades could get word to some authority of what Morell was up to, perhaps the Royal Navy, then Minorca could be found, stopped, and caught red-handed at something the Marchants wouldn’t be able to buy their way out of.
There was his tablet, of course, which he could use to send a message, but that was tied to Minorca and his transmission would go first through her systems. He couldn’t think of what he might send to relay the information that wouldn’t give him away if it was monitored by Morell or Turkington—and he was certain all the crew’s communications would be monitored now.
Nor c
ould he encrypt a message, for that would be suspicious in and of itself.
There’d be little use in that, anyway, as any message he sent via Minorca would be weeks reaching Eades. It would be copied onto every outgoing ship bound in the direction of the message’s destination, and copied from each of those to any others going the same way—whichever got there first would deliver it, and the process of marking it so and deleting all those copies would begin.
All of which meant Minorca would be done with her dirty business long before Eades was even aware of it.
No, he needed a faster method, and that meant a dedicated packet—or at least a fast one, bound in the direction of his message to begin with.
Those weren’t cheap, though, and he had little coin—less than usual, truth be told, after his expenses of the previous leave. The house hadn’t emptied his pockets entirely, but they’d taken more than the cost of the girl’s hire for the trouble of getting him downstairs and parking him in the kitchen overnight. He’d not begrudged it at the time, but now he felt the need for every pence.
Not cheap, no, and neither were such things for hire in the common spacers’ district.
They’d put down on Kuriyya at midmorning, leaving the crew with a full afternoon and night’s leave, and Avrel’s search took him well away from the pubs and brothels nearest the landing field, past the more genteel establishments catering to the ships’ officers.
Here, though much the same services were on offer, the environment was more refined. There were no burly fellows or half-dressed girls hawking a place’s wares on the street, no mugs sold through the pubs windows, and any advertising as to an establishment’s purpose was quite a bit more subtle.
Avrel scanned the storefronts. A bank, he thought, or a gentleman’s club, would either have what he needed or point him in the right direction—if they didn’t throw him out before his first word. His ship’s jumpsuit clearly didn’t fit in with the attire on display in this district—even the rattiest captain at least gave the illusion of being a gentleman.
Orphans In the Black: A Space Opera Anthology Page 30
