Zou nodded. “It is a masterwork.”
“What is it?” she said.
He laughed. “It is a gun. It fires bullets.”
“Solid rounds? Like a PDC?” She looked down at the tiny thing. Short and stubby with a wide-mouthed barrel. She’d seen PDCs. That wasn’t a PDC.
“Yes, but no.” Zou lifted the weapon out, holding it to her. She took it while he explained, “It is a shotgun. It fires tiny pellets. The barrel is short by design. It helps the pellets spread, do you see?”
“No,” said El. “I’m not an Engineer.”
“Okay,” said Zou. “You don’t need to understand how it works. Just what it does. At ten paces, a circle the size of a basketball will be obliterated.”
“Basketball?”
“Basketball. It gets less effective after that. So, try to hit people closer than ten paces.”
“How much?” said El.
“One hundred thousand coins,” said Zou.
She coughed. “You what?”
“It is one of a kind.”
“You looking to retire on this one sale, Zou?”
He laughed. “Do you still carry the Emperor’s credits?”
“Maybe,” said El.
“How many?” said Zou.
“I have ten thousand,” said El. “But they’re worthless.”
“Not to a collector,” said Zou. “For ten thousand of your Emperor’s credits, I will give you this gun.”
El looked him in the eye. “Zou? You know they’re worthless. Even to a collector. They’re just chits with an imprinted ident. They can be milled at any fab with approval from the treasury. You can turn them into coins at the spaceport.”
Zou nodded. “Sometimes you take worthless things and exchange them for valuable things.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It depends on what you are buying,” said Zou. “It depends on what you are selling.”
• • •
Once she had the gun belted to her waist, a box of cartridges slotted into the belt, and a fab recipe for how to make more, she looked for a place to buy clothes. On a whim she slipped into a store that offered LATEST FASHIONS FROM THE VENUS ORBITAL COLONIES on the holo, underneath logograms that probably said much the same thing. The latest fashions from the Venus orbital colonies turned out to be much like old fashions on Earth. Dark pants. A jacket that might have been printed leather but probably wasn’t. A shirt of white fabric that smelled like cotton and stretched like elastic. El would have preferred armor, but that was difficult to get. The shopkeeper here explained that everyone wanted armor. So, it was just the jacket, shirt, and pants.
She stuffed her ship suit into a recycler. Sol was marching down the horizon, looking for a place to sleep. It didn’t seem like such a crazy idea. Sleep, after some food and another beer. Maybe she could make this day end up okay, despite how it kept trying to buck her off.
CHAPTER FOUR
DUMPTY’S GRILL HAD the kind of safe, innocuous name that suggested the inside would be free from muggers and stacked with well-intentioned diners. El walked inside, following the smell of steak. If it wasn’t steak, their textured protein game was on point, and she didn’t care either way.
Inside the Grill, tables were packed. Waiters and waitresses bussed food on trays from the kitchen to tables. There were families eating. A few kids ran among the tables. It looked noisy. A good crowd. It was El’s kind of place, although she preferred fewer kids when she was in a drinking mood.
A perky young woman greeted her at the door, a holo stage beside her advertising specials. “Help you?”
“Room for one more?” said El.
“Bar fine?”
“Bar’s perfect,” said El. She followed the woman into Dumpty’s Grill, feeling her shoulders descend a few centimeters, the tension leaving her by degrees. The bar sat dead center of the Grill, an island of promised joy. It was square, each side studded with seats. She sat, waving the bartender — another human, no machines here — over. El had to lean forward and raise her voice a little. “Beer. Whatever’s on tap.”
He nodded, moving away. El felt her elbow jostled, a woman beside her apologizing. El was about to say something like it ain’t no thing but the words froze on her lips in surprise. Across the bar was the pirate from the spaceport.
What the hell was his name? Chariot? Chapman?
It didn’t much matter, because Chariot or Chapman or whatever he called himself gave her a wave and went back to eating a burger the size of a drive core. She noticed he still sported that sword at his back, which was odd for a place like this, but after El’s adventures of the day she could appreciate why a man would want to go about armed. She still had her shotgun at her hip, round in the chamber, but when her beer arrived she figured the odds of using it went down.
El used the console inset into the bar top to sift through the array of meal choices. Burgers. Steaks. Fries with everything. El closed her eyes, stabbing down with a finger. Spin the dice, rely on a little luck. That was the ticket.
Chariot decided at that moment to wipe his hands, leaving a good half of his burger on the plate, and saunter towards her. It was a good saunter; as a practitioner of the same rolling stride she could appreciate it. When he arrived, he said, “Hi.”
“Uh,” she said, taking a sip of her beer.
“Captain Chevell,” he said. “Uh. Nathan Chevell. I’m Nate. From the spaceport.”
“I remember,” she lied.
“You never gave me your name,” he said.
“You never said why you’re carrying a sword in a family restaurant,” she countered.
He frowned. “Well. Thing is, if action goes down in here, a blaster is the wrong choice of weapon. Don’t want a missed round hitting someone just here for a good time.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said.
“I know,” he said, leaning an elbow against the bar.
“I’m not interested,” El said. “Why don’t you go finish your burger?”
He pushed off from the bar, holding up his hands in surrender. “If you change your mind—”
“I won’t.” She watched him go, disliking the way her eyes were drawn to his butt. It was a nice butt, but she didn’t want to sign on with a pirate. Her own meal arrived, a steaming tray full of nachos, which felt like a good choice. As she ate, she kept eyeing Nate over the bar. What had he said at the spaceport?
The ship picks her Helm.
El turned that over in her mind. That old rust bucket chose her? What kind of Helm did it think she was? She was one of the best. Elspeth Roussel flew destroyers. Not shuttles, or lifters, or whatever the hell it was. El considered her nachos.
The ship picks her Helm.
“Fuck that,” said El.
“Too right,” said a voice behind her. A hand on her shoulder — not this shit again — spinning her around. She took in Square Jaw, flanked by not just Whiskey Complexion and Short and Ugly but also Fun Starts Here. “Told you we’d find you. Empire scum.” He pulled back his fist to lay into her.
And paused, El’s sidearm nestled against his gut. “So,” she said. Her eyes flicked to a kid running behind the four thugs. She thought of something else Nate had said. A blaster is the wrong choice of weapon. He might have said the same thing about a shotgun. But Elspeth Roussel would not get rolled by the same fools twice in one day.
“Is there a problem here?” said Nate, sidling on up. El noted that a small pool of quiet had settled around her, diners and drinkers alike pulling back.
“I don’t need your help,” said El.
“I ain’t rescuing you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Nate. “I hate bullies. Four on one? That’s just plain mean.”
“Four on two isn’t much better,” said Square Jaw. “You with this Empire sympathizer?”
Nate looked the other man up and down, then glanced at El. “You going to hurt her? The four of you, against a fallen champion, down on her luck?”
&
nbsp; “Yeah.”
“Then I’m with her,” said Nate. “You start something, and—”
He was interrupted as Whiskey Complexion ducked forward, the laser on the rig’s arm glowing bright and red. Square Jaw batted El’s hand aside, her sidearm going off. A hole the size of a grapefruit opened in the chest of Short and Ugly as the weapon fired.
There was a hiss of steel as Nate drew that sword from over his shoulder. El saw black metal as the blade cut through the rig’s arm coming towards him. He looked like he was born to hold that blade as he spun, the weapon cutting through Whiskey Complexion’s neck. Blood fountained.
El was fumbling for another cartridge to put into her sidearm. Strong Jaw punched her in the face — fucking again! — and she rocked back. When she re-oriented herself, she saw her opponent running for the back. Nate made to follow but something hitched in his stride and he stumbled. El remembered the Emperor’s Black she’d met on a starship, all pride and death wrapped up in a bundle of duty, and thought to herself, it wasn’t running away that stole the Black from this man. He’d been injured. He’d been injured, and still put himself shoulder to shoulder with her.
Maybe the Black were just made that way.
Until this moment, she’d forgotten Fun Starts Here, but the skinny man made his move. He sucker punched Nate in the side of the head, causing him to stumble. What was with these assholes and hitting people in the face? El paused, grabbing a beer bottle from the bar beside her. She lunged forward, smashing it across Fun Starts Here’s face. The other man went down in a shower of bloody bottle fragments.
“Thanks,” said Nate.
“Uh,” said El. “Isn’t this where I thank you?”
“Call it even?”
“Not even close,” said El. “Who are you?”
“Captain Chevell of the free trader Tyche. I’m—”
“Who are you really?” said El. When Nate didn’t answer, she tried a different question. “Do you always borrow trouble?”
“Annemarie said so,” said Nate.
El only knew of one Annemarie, and she was surely dead, her brother’s throne empty and cold. “So, Nate.”
“So, mysterious-Helm-who-has-yet-to-introduce-herself.”
She gave him an awkward smile, then stuck out a shaking hand. “El. Elspeth Roussel.”
He clasped her hand, ignoring how it shook, and she liked him for that small courtesy. His grip was warm. She felt callouses and strength there. “Good to meet you, Helm.”
The ship picks her Helm.
“I figure we best be getting on,” said El.
“I figure,” said Nate. He looked out the door Strong Jaw had taken, cocking an eyebrow at her.
“No way,” she said. “Fighting’s for fools. I want another beer.” She sauntered — two can play at that game — towards the main door, dropping coins on the front desk as she left.
• • •
Well-laid plans got themselves unlaid. It was often the way of things. That was how getting another beer turned into a run for her life.
El walked out into the cooling air of San Francisco, Sol a forgotten memory to be rekindled with the dawn. The street was busy, but lacked the ambience of sirens in the distance. Based on El’s earlier experience, there would be no formal help coming. For the next while, be it days, or weeks, or years, citizens were on their own. Especially if they were Empire scum. Having one of the Emperor’s Black — she was sure of this — at her side gave her a little more confidence she might survive the night.
What doused some of those bright embers of optimism was the shout that cut across the general hum of the crowd. “There!” El turned, taking in Strong Jaw coming towards her. He had a new group of people with him — hell, does he have vigilantes on speed dial? — and what looked like a strong desire to continue his earlier actions of killing Elspeth Roussel. They were shouldering through the crowd, weapons from blasters to pieces of pipe held in their hands. The only thing buying El a little more time sucking oxygen was the distance between them and the density of the crowd.
She looked for a way out, and almost collided with Nate, the man arriving at her side like a thief in the night. “We should run,” she said.
“Not much for running,” said Nate, a hand tapping his leg. “Not anymore, and probably not before, either. I say we fight.”
“I say you’re a fool,” said El. “You going to take ten guys on your blade?”
“No. This isn’t the time for close work,” said Nate. He unholstered his blaster, pointing it at the heavens. He fired, the bright flash and accompanying fzzzt-crack of plasma unleashed causing screams in the crown around them. The panic of people running for their lives created random patterns like a meteor storm. She’d flown through one when Helming a corvette, trying to keep the air in the hull while rocks tried to do the opposite. This Nathan Chevell was crazy, and if he wanted to die that was up to him, but she wanted to live.
El ran, trying to find a way clear. If she went into a building they risked getting trapped. Being on the move was a better option. She spun. “Nate! You’ve got a ship, right?”
He was pointing his blaster at a man carrying a length of wood. Nate fired, the man — and his piece of wood — turning into pieces of blazing carbon. “I’ve got the best ship in the universe,” he said, then ducked as plasma raged towards him. She took the hint, hunkering down beside an auto taxi.
Auto taxi. El hit the door controls, the gull wing opening like a mother’s arms. “Get in!” she yelled, taking her own advice. The back window exploded in a shower of molten glass as blaster fire raked the car. It was a standard auto taxi, a console set underneath a holo asking her DESTINATION?
Nate slid in next to her, head low. “Spaceport,” he said.
“Way ahead of you,” she said. She keyed the destination, and the auto taxi drew away from the curb. The electric motor was near silent. More plasma hammered at the rear of the machine, pieces of metal spraying away in molten fragments.
“Can this thing go any faster?” said Nate.
“It’s an auto taxi,” said El. “There’s no human at the wheel.”
He looked at her, incredulous. “And here I was, thinking you were some kind of hot shot Helm. You can fly more than starships, right?”
She wanted to punch him. Instead, she tapped at the safety plastic between them and the control booth at the front. “Sealed.”
He pointed his blaster, melted plastic showering through the cabin as he pulled the trigger. She screamed, ducking her face as superheated fragments sprayed everywhere. “You idiot!”
“Abuse me later,” he said.
He was right. She would scream at him later. For now, they needed to survive. She shimmied through the gap into the control booth, the jagged hole scraping at her clothes. Her new shirt’s hem snared, and she swore. The shirt gave up with a tear of fabric and she was through, spilled into the control booth like a flat beer down the drain. El kept low, checking the control systems. Nothing too fancy, a mere two dimensions to play with here. Acceleration controls on the floor. Brake controls — hah! Like she’d be using those — alongside. She cleared the warnings on the holo, bringing up a wireframe of the road and traffic. No way she was putting her head up to get shot, so it was flying by instruments only. El grabbed the wheel, and slammed her foot down on the accelerator.
The autocab surged forward, electric motor accelerating like a blender. They went from a speed close to fuck all to a speed similar to fuck me in less than a second. Tires scrabbled at ceramicrete as they sped away.
“There,” she said, distance opening between them and the people with blasters. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” She dared to sit up a little.
“I guess,” said Nate. “I mean, I’ve seen better.”
“When?” said El. “Name a specific time when you hijacked an auto taxi, blaster fire hailing around you, and got free without dying.”
“That is an interesting set of constraints,” said Nate.
; “That’s right,” said El. “You’ve never seen better.”
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s—”
Whatever order he thought he would give her — like she worked for pirates — was lost as the auto taxi was hit in the side. The impact was towards the rear, the tiny cab spinning like a top as they screeched in a shower of tire smoke through an intersection. El glimpsed roughly a hundred people’s faces as they spun, all with the same holy shit please don’t let that hit me expression as they tumbled by, out of control.
Crunch. The rear of the auto taxi came to rest against another parked vehicle. Out the front windscreen, now a complex spider’s web of cracks, was a large utility vehicle. It had hit them. The other machine sat like a bull, squat, uncompromising. The vehicle had a manipulator arm on the top, a large claw at the end. The claw was lowered, metal covering the cabin. El figured that was to stop Nate getting a clear shot at the driver.
The intersection where they’d shored up was a confusion of automated vehicles trying to work out what was going on, and pedestrians panicking and screaming. El figured she was partly to blame for the state of the vehicles, what with taking manual control of a machine in a city run by automation. The systems could cope with little pieces of randomness among the order, but running at high speed taxed things some. Add in a collision, and there would be a level of confusion in the central computer that might need a human to untangle.
A quick dose of pocket math suggested to El that there was no way they should get hit by that thing again. The other machine surged forward as its electric motor whined. El brushed broken glass out of her hair, then gave the wheel a twist, hitting the accelerator so hard it felt like she might bury it in the ceramicrete below them.
They scudded out of the way, the utility vehicle smashing into the car they’d been resting against. El was free, the small auto taxi trying its best to run ahead of the wind. But the accident from before had given the vehicle a shudder and a mighty pull to the left. She wasn’t sure over the previous smell of blaster fire but El thought something underneath them might have caught alight, or be about to.
Tyche's Chosen Page 4
