Orphans In the Black: A Space Opera Anthology

by Amy J. Murphy

  Unsuited, heads down, they shuffled forward, bound at wrists and ankles with thin cord, then bound together so that each one’s hands were nearly touching the waist of the one in front.

  Hobler counted them off as they entered, then cut the line attaching a group as he reached ten, the number to be placed in each of the hold’s compartments.

  “Harre,” he said, “you and your mates take these.”

  The mess singled out kept their own eyes downcast, but Harre took the line and his mates surrounded the group to take them below.

  So it went, each group of ten in the “cargo” being led below by one of Minorca’s messes to be placed in a compartment.

  The work went on in silence, save for Hobler calling out the mess which was to take the next group below, until one man in the shuffling line looked up at Hobler’s voice.

  “Oy! New Londoners? I’m Barden Dary off Christina’s Rose! Bound home from Hso-Hsi and taken off —”

  One of the vacsuited figures from the other ship leapt forward and struck the man with a stunstick, knocking him to the deck unconscious.

  “No talk!” the suit’s external speakers sounded, and the figure waved his stunstick at the others.

  Kaycie whispered something to Morell, who listened for a moment, then shook his head sharply. She stepped back from him, jaw clenched.

  “Detail a mess to carry that man,” Morell said, his own jaw tight. “And any man who speaks to the cargo will be put in-atmosphere at the next system, with no shares—is that understood?”

  When only silence greeted him, Morell repeated. “Is that understood?”

  The chorus of, “Aye, sir,” was muted, but appeared to satisfy him.

  “This ain’t right,” Grubbs muttered into his mug.

  They were at their mess table, the berthing deck quieter than Avrel had ever heard one. Captain Morell had ordered an extra issue of spirits, and so their mugs were full to brimming. Avrel sipped at his, wanting a clear head, while the others gulped, clearly trying to dull their wits after taking the cargo below—and the revelation that Minorca was not hauling only those taken in raids amongst the Barbary worlds, but spacers from New London and, he suspected, other nations as well.

  Detheridge’s face was the darkest, for at the end of the seeming never-ending chain of “cargo” had come two full compartments of women.

  “Those girls were off Vólkerhausen,” she said, never taking her eyes from her mug. “I’ll swear to it. They don’t do that hair-beading nowhere else.”

  “Not no Barbary world, that,” Grubbs muttered.

  “It would be all right if they were?” Detheridge raised her eyes to glare at Grubbs. “Knowing what they’re bound for?”

  Grubbs looked up and the two locked eyes for a moment. They half rose, as though to launch themselves over the table once again.

  Avrel leaned forward and laid a hand on each of their arms.

  “Here, you two, that’s enough.” He pushed them back to their seats. “You’re, neither of you, angry at each other, only at what Minorca’s about. There’s no defense of this, is there, Grubbs? And there’s nothing right about it, nor anything to make it so.”

  Grubbs met his eye for a moment, then shook his head. “No. No, it ain’t.”

  He and Detheridge sat back, returning to their silence while Avrel pondered their situation.

  The cargo was all aboard, and Minorca set sail, with the other merchantman off in its own direction. He’d seen that while out on the hull making sail. He’d also seen that the second ship, the well-armed ship, kept pace with Minorca. Hanging off her stern like an escort.

  Or a guard.

  He was drawn from his thoughts by Captain Morell’s arrival. The captain took his place at the fore of the berthing deck to speak, Turkington at his side and Hobler with his mates between the officers and crew. Avrel noted Kaycie wasn’t present, and wondered at that, before Morell began speaking.

  “All right, lads,” he said, “it’s been a rough day, I know. There’s none of us pleased by today’s events, but we’ll get through this as a crew, I assure you. Some of you have sailed through the Barbary before, some on Marchant ships—and you’ll know that Marchant ships are the safest to make that journey on. There’s no pirates in the Barbary who’ll take on a Marchant hull.

  “Well, that’s not only for the Marchant’s size and guns, you’ll have realized now. There’re deals to be made out here, and they’re not all wholesome and clean, but it’s what keeps our hulls and crews safe where others aren’t. This trip is one of those—you make this sail, just a few more weeks, and you’ll be keeping other Marchant crews, men and women you’ve sailed with before, free and clear in the Barbary, you hear?”

  Morell cleared his throat.

  “There’s coin in it, too, for those of you who care—and that’ll be most of you, I think, when the journey’s done. When this cargo’s off Minorca and we’re on to Hso-Hsi, the pay in your accounts’ll taste just as good as any.”

  His face grew stern.

  “But I’ll have no complaints. This cargo’s gone at our next stop and then we’re done with it. I’ll see any man who makes trouble before then put in-atmosphere—with no shares and no recommendation. Put out at our next stop, you hear?”

  Avrel noted Grubbs blanch, as did no few others, as the implications of that sank in.

  If their next stop was the destination for this cargo, then that would be no normal system. There’d be no legitimate merchantmen to take sail with after Minorca, even leaving aside the loss of, perhaps, years’ worth of shares in previous voyages. There’d be no ship and little money for one of Minorca’s crew put in-atmosphere at that port.

  Morell cleared his throat again.

  “You’ll note Miss Overfield is not present,” he went on. “She has taken exception to this voyage and our cargo. Exception which has gone beyond what I will tolerate.” He took a deep breath. “My expectations for my officers are the same as for you, my crew. As such, Miss Overfield has been dismissed from the Marchant Company, she is confined to her quarters, and will be put in-atmosphere at our next destination.”

  The spot Grubbs had mentioned was well known to the crew. A squared-off area between the crates and vats of supplies that kept Minorca and her crew running for months in the Dark. The vats were tall and the crates stacked high, so that the light was dimmer inside the little area, about four meters on a side. One entered through either a narrow space between two vats, having to crawl at the middle, because the vats bulged out to meet there, or by sliding a crate, mysteriously left aboard an anti-grav pallet, aside to form a larger opening.

  The latter had already been moved when Avrel arrived, slid back into the hold’s main walkway.

  Avrel made his way between the two crates to either side of the opening and was surprised, though he supposed he shouldn’t have been, to find more than his messmates in the space.

  There were six others there, standing or squatting with Detheridge, Grubbs, and Sween. Four women and two men, each from a different mess. A couple Avrel knew well, while a couple others he had only a passing acquaintance with, despite so long aboard ship together—those two were on the opposite watch and kept to themselves, in any case. The last two, Presgraves and Rosson, were two of the last Avrel’d expect to have come to this meeting, though.

  Rosson was a hard man and didn’t strike Avrel as the sort to worry all that much about where his coin came from. Presgraves was the same, but Avrel could understand her change of heart. The presence of so many women amongst the “cargo” had shaken more than a few of Minorca’s crew from their apathy about this voyage.

  He stopped in the entryway and raised his brows in query to his mates. Sween and Detheridge came over and they put their heads together so the others couldn’t hear.

  “Are you certain of them?” Avrel asked.

  “They’re all of like mind,” Detheridge said, and Sween nodded agreement.

  “And her?” Avrel nodded in Presgraves
’ direction. “Is she reliable? I mean, what with —”

  “She’s a good hand,” Sween said. “I mean, sure, she’s quick to fight a bloke … and she’s been up before the captain more than once for a roll in the hold, but that’s only for the ship being so long a’space and she gets a bit … twitchy, I guess.”

  “Twitchy?”

  “The lass likes her sport.” Sween shrugged. “And those charges on Pemsey weren’t nothing—why, she’s only to be gone from the system for six months and there’s nothing more said about it.”

  “So, you vouch for her?”

  Sween opened his mouth, then closed it and frowned. “Now, I wouldn’t be going so far as vouch, now as I think on it, but —”

  “She’ll do for carrying word back to her mess,” Detheridge said. “And that’s all we’re about just now, yes?”

  “Yes,” Avrel agreed. “All right, then.” He stepped into the cleared space where the others waited. “So, you’re all of like mind?”

  “Aye,” a few of them said, nodding.

  “And our mates, as well,” Presgraves said, “though we thought it best only one come from each for this.”

  Avrel nodded, suddenly wondering what, exactly, “this” was to be and how these newcomers and their mates had discovered that before he himself had.

  He settled his back against one of the crates and looked at the others, who were all looking at him.

  “What?”

  Detheridge frowned. “This is all that’s coming. Hadn’t you best get started?”

  Avrel frowned back. “What, me?”

  No matter that the others seemed ready enough to let Avrel “start”, they weren’t about to let him finish.

  He’d no more laid out the bones of their complaint than they’d begun to flesh it out with plans. Presgraves’ desire to blow Minorca’s fusion plant as a last resort was not the maddest of the lot.

  “Violence will get us nowhere,” Avrel said. “Not with that sloop off our stern. She outguns Minorca in both numbers and weight, and likely out-mans us, as well.”

  “Well, there’s no ‘pretty, please, and may I’ going to work with Morell on this,” Presgraves said.

  Avrel nodded, noting as well that none of those in the group had been referring to the captain as Captain or Captain Morell—no, it was “Morell” alone, and that spoke volumes of where their minds were. Minorca no longer had a captain that this group served.

  “No, but it’ll do us no good to …” He trailed off, as none of them had yet really spoken the words—they’d danced around it, but not said it outright. He sighed. Minorca and his current situation were so far removed from what he’d thought his life would be years ago at school.

  All those classes, but never a one on this.

  He took a deep breath.

  “It’ll do us no good to take the ship —” He noted that more than one in the group winced as he spoke the words, knowing, as he did himself, that they, this group, were now fully liable to be hanged if they were ever found out. Even if they did nothing, he’d just spoken mutiny and they’d heard the words without dragging him to the captain immediately. Even Presgraves’ talk of the fusion plant had been so couched in hyperbole that it could be argued as just malcontented talk. “No good at all to take the ship if we’re then retaken by that sloop. We need to be patient and plan.”

  He met each of their eyes in turn. No one looked away from his gaze, but none seemed happy by where they were either.

  Perhaps this wasn’t the way, he wondered. Perhaps they should all just go back to their bunks and suffer through this voyage. He could jump ship at whatever system Kaycie was put off on and make his way with her —

  A noise, barely audible, caught his attention and he was moving before he even thought.

  He caught sight of the others’ widened eyes as he spun and rushed between the crates that formed the entry way.

  It was only as he caught sight of the figure in the hold’s main aisle, crouched and peering around the crate’s corner, that he realized he’d heard the shuffle of a boot against the deck. Only as he recognized Hobler, straightening now, face angry and mouth contorting to shout, that he realized they were found out.

  Hobler stood, turning to shout for the guards near the slave compartments, and Avrel lunged.

  He thought only to silence the man and gain a bit of time to think and talk to the others, but Hobler leaned away. The lean threw him off balance, his feet tangled, and Avrel’s lunge to grapple and place a hand over his mouth turned into a shove.

  Hobler was flung backward. His neck, just below his skull, hit the edge of the crate, as though Fate itself had stepped in to ensure the worst possible outcome.

  There was a thud and a sickening crack.

  Hobler collapsed to the deck, Avrel atop him.

  Avrel knew in an instant that the man was dead. The feel of the body under him had lost all sense of humanity even before they’d come fully to rest.

  He rolled off and scampered to the nearest crate, putting his back to it. His eyes were wide and he couldn’t seem to get enough air. He hadn’t meant to kill the man, only to stop him—silence him from yelling for a moment so that the guards wouldn’t be alerted and they’d have a bit of time to think —

  Detheridge and the others crowded into the hold’s aisle. She looked from Avrel to Hobler’s body, then back again.

  “You were saying, lad?”

  One doesn’t easily come back from death, no matter which side of the cause one’s on.

  Avrel was aware of his surroundings—the feel of a crate, solids for the carpenter’s printer, he thought, at his back, Detheridge and the others crowding around, as well as their mutterings—but his focus was on Hobler. On the still, eerily still, body which used to be Hobler, at least.

  “Oh, we’re buggered now,” Rosson muttered.

  “They’ll be on us,” Presgraves agreed.

  Avrel heard it, but couldn’t quite process what they were saying.

  It had all turned sideways in such an instant that he couldn’t take it in. Until now, they’d just been talking. Oh, there’d been the intent to take the ship, but there was still that knowledge that they could walk away—go back to their berths and speak no more of it. There was an out.

  No out now.

  Hobler’d be discovered and someone would hang for it. Moreover, Avrel’d done it. He’d killed a man—all unintentional, perhaps, but still it was on him and no one else. He supposed there’d been that knowledge too, that no taking of Minorca could be entirely without violence, but that had been in the future. There’d been an out.

  Someone else was speaking now, though in a calm, reasoned tone unlike the others.

  “No, Presgraves, we’ve no need of you blowing the reactor. We’re not nearly in straits so dire yet. Yes, should we need to, you’ll have the job. For now, go with Detheridge, right? Detheridge, you take Presgraves to meet with her messmates—just the ones you’re sure of, hear me, Presgraves? Get them down here. Sween, you go with Rosson and do the same. If there are others who’ll join us—ones you’re sure of, mind you— then bring them here. Or, better, if they’re bright enough then just give them the eye and the nod with a whisper to be ready. Sure of, though, and I mean bet-your-mum’s-life sure.”

  “Me mum’s not so —”

  “Not the time, Grubbs, you understand my meaning, I’m certain. Good. Now, Sween, you drag Hobler’s body back into this hidey-hole and we’ll set the crate in front. He’ll be missed end of watch and that’s but two bells from now. The ship’s arms are under lock, so we’ll need to free those in the slave compartments first and take the stunners from the guards, then we’ll move on the quarterdeck and the fusion plant next, to ensure control of the ship—no, Presgraves, I’m afraid you’ll be with me for the quarterdeck. If there’s anything to be blown up, it’ll go to you—my word on it.

  “Detheridge, you take the fusion plant with two others while I take Sween and Presgraves for the quarterdeck. We�
�ll each take however many of the captives might be trusted to follow instructions—I’ll want no violence against the crew who’re not immediately with us. They’ve not had a chance to change sides and I’ll not hold inaction against them.”

  The speaker stopped and Avrel took his gaze from Hobler’s body to scan the others, wondering what task he’d be assigned. The others stared back at him and he realized it had been him speaking all along, the years watching his father and other captains aboard family ships and the further years of training at Lesser Sibward coming to the fore when he most needed it.

  “Well,” Avrel said, “be about it.”

  The others moved off with more than one, “Aye, sir.”

  Detheridge held back a moment, staring at Avrel. “Knew you weren’t just no bloody topman.”

  The four guards outside the compartments holding the captives—even in the act of freeing them, Avrel had trouble thinking the vile word slavery—went down with nary a sound.

  Avrel and Detheridge walked up to them, arguing loudly about which owed the other gulpers over some imagined bet, and grappled two, while Presgraves and Sween crept up from aft and drove the other two to the deck from behind. Once the scuffle started, the others, Grubbs, Rosson, and six more who’d responded to the call, swarmed out of the hold’s shadows and took the lads down.

  One of the guards, Lish, an able spacer from a world near the Barbary, offered to join in the mutiny, but Avrel wouldn’t trust him to assist right off. He was put in a now empty compartment with the other guards and given the task of watching them.

  “His world’s been raided more than once,” Detheridge said, “he’d likely help.”

  “I’ll trust no one who wasn’t with us to start this,” Avrel said, “it takes but one shout to alert the quarterdeck we’re coming and it’d be all over.”

  The quarterdeck and the fusion plant were the critical areas to take. If the latter wasn’t taken, then power to the ship could be shut off and they’d have no choice to surrender—the former could lock down the ship, closing and fastening all of the hatches remotely, so that they’d not be able to make their way anywhere. They had to take both, take them cleanly, and at very nearly the same time.