Dark Deeds

by Mike Brooks

  “Can’t hurt,” Jenna said to herself and jammed it onto her head. It immediately made her head too warm, not to mention a little itchy, and she wondered when Jia had last washed it. However, she had no more capacity to procrastinate, so she gingerly reached out and began to feed power to the lift thrusters.

  There was no immediate effect, not even a change in the pitch of the engines so far as she could tell, although with the klaxons still going, they’d have had to be on the verge of genuinely exploding before she’d actually be able to hear them. She moved the lever a little farther, then a little farther . . .

  “Shit!” she barked as the Jonah lurched upwards, and her opinion of Jia’s piloting skill instantly rose a few notches. Jenna had barely moved the lever, yet it had felt like she’d thrown it to full. How did Jia manage to make their takeoffs so (usually) smooth? “Captain, I’m off the ground!”

  +Good work! How high are you?+

  “Uh . . .” She scanned her instruments desperately, looking for the altimeter. “Two . . . metres?”

  There was a momentary pause, then the Captain spoke again with the tone of someone trying to remain patient. +We’ll need you to go a little higher, Jenna.+

  “Oh God.” Jenna tried to peer up through the Jonah’s viewshield, but the flashing red lights made it hard to see what was going on. Somewhere there would be a readout of the chaos that was now in full swing around her, but she doubted she’d be able to make head or tail of it in any case, so she’d just have to hope for the best. She grabbed the thruster lever again and jammed it forwards some more.

  “Craaaaaap!”

  The Jonah jumped upwards like her brother when he’d accidentally sat on an imported bee back on Franklin Minor when they’d been kids, only somewhat farther and quicker. She pulled back a little, not wanting to go too high, she’d apparently overreacted, and the shuttle began to sink again.

  “Fucking machine!” she raged, trying to edge the control forwards again enough to arrest her descent. “Why won’t you—”

  +Jenna?+

  “What?!” she screamed at Drift.

  +Open the door!+

  She looked up desperately as the Jonah seemed to settle rather unsteadily into place in midair. The flashing lights of the security forces had reached the spaceport but were slowing uncertainly, probably due to the warning signs indicating that something large and destructive was going to happen at any moment. However, weaving through and over them was another pair of headlights, a pair that had to be carrying the rest of her crew.

  “The door! Right!” She scanned the dash furiously. She knew where the switch was for the damn doors; she’d used it countless times. But right now her head was full of unfamiliar flight controls, and she couldn’t see the wood for the trees.

  +Jenna!+

  There! Jenna slammed her hand down on it and felt the Jonah’s balance shift ever so slightly as the main cargo ramp began to lower. She reached out for something to try to bring the nose up a little, then decided against it, just in case she flipped the entire craft onto its back or something equally disastrous.

  “Uh,” she said uncertainly as their rental car ploughed on towards her, veering around a rising Georgia-class shuttle as it did so, “aren’t you coming in a little fast?”

  +If anyone has anything valuable in the cargo bay,+ Alim Muradov’s voice said seriously, +I apologise in advance.+

  Then he threw the car into a flat spin for 180 degrees and threw the main drive to full. The aircar’s forward momentum abruptly became backwards momentum, and dropped just as abruptly as its thrusters fought against that momentum. Jenna saw the aircar disappear out of view beneath her cockpit and winced, fully expecting to see a fireball blossom out and feel the Jonah buck under her. Her crewmates’ still-active comms broadcast a terminal-sounding metallic noise a second later, and she bit her knuckles in horror.

  +Madre de Dios!+ Drift’s voice barked. +I thought you said you hadn’t flown one of these in a while?+

  +If I had, I would never have tried that,+ Muradov replied, sounding rather shaken. +Is everyone well?+

  +The fuck you playing at, báichī?+ a voice shouted in the background, quieter than the others but instantly recognisable.

  Jenna breathed again. Not only were her crew still alive and unexploded, the Chief’s recklessness had apparently roused Jia enough for her to start swearing again, albeit still with the sound of tears in her voice.

  “A?” she asked hopefully.

  +It’ll take more than the Chief’s piss-poor driving to kill me,+ her boyfriend replied. +Uh, d’you mind shuttin’ the door, though? Don’t want any cops following us in.+

  “Got it.” Jenna flicked the appropriate switch and just barely felt the main cargo door begin to grind closed again. “Guys, I would really appreciate it if someone who knew what they were doing could get up here. I get the nasty feeling that we’re going to get caught in someone’s backwash in a minute, and then we’re as good as toast.”

  +Working on it,+ Drift’s voice was tense. +The important thing is that we’re airborne, which means nothing the local cops have got can tie us down now. Just get to your station, and be ready to do anything you can to keep people off our backs.+

  Jenna muted her comm furiously, wrenched Jia’s hat off and nearly hurled it at the controls before catching herself in time and dropping it gently somewhere it wouldn’t nudge anything important. Get to her station, indeed! She’d just got a genuine shuttle off the ground with no training whatsoever, and did she get any thanks for it? She grabbed her wrist terminal and threw herself into her seat, then crossed her arms and scowled at the cockpit door.

  She heard Jia before she saw her. Which, given the cockpit door was designed to have an airtight seal, was pretty impressive.

  “—give a fuck!” Jia was shouting as the door slid open. The pilot backed in, her eyes red and her cheeks tearstained. The Captain followed her, hands out in a placating manner but seemingly unable to get a word in edgeways. Behind him came Apirana, who stopped in the doorway. He was trying to look casual, but Jenna knew he’d placed himself there to make sure Jia couldn’t leave.

  “You think I give a shit about this now?” Jia raged at Drift. “You think I care? My brother’s fucking dead!” She flew at the Captain suddenly, hammering her fist into his chest. “He’s fucking dead! This is your fault! Your stupid, fucked-up plan!”

  “I know!” Drift yelled back, trying to fend her off. “I know it’s my fault!” Jia could only see his mechanical right eye from where she was sitting, but the corner of his mouth was quivering as though he was on the verge of tears too. “I fucked up, Jia! But now I need you to make sure that my fucked-up plan doesn’t kill you, and Jenna, and A, and the Chief as well! I need you to get us out of here!”

  “And how’s that gonna help Kuai? Huh?” Jia demanded. She was clenching and unclenching her fists apparently unconsciously, and Jenna braced herself for what might happen if Jia launched herself at the Captain again. If they struggled and knocked the flight controls . . .

  “It’s gonna help him because it means you can get him home,” Apirana spoke up, his voice booming out and filling the small cockpit, momentarily drowning out even the still-wailing alarms. Jenna jumped: She’d forgotten how loud he could be when he tried.

  “It means you can take him back to Chengdu,” Apirana continued, taking a step forward. “It means you can go back to your parents and give him a burial, or a cremation, or whatever your family does, Jia. If we get taken here, by the cops, we’ll all be arrested, and you won’t see him again until they let you out for some faceless ceremony, maybe. Get us out of here, and you can take care of him.”

  Jia glared at the Māori, but her rage seemed to have abruptly burned out, leaving only bitterness. “I am done with this fucking ship. And with all of you.”

  Jenna felt the other woman’s words land like a punch to the gut. The pilot was arrogant, foul-mouthed, and generally abrasive, but she was not given to idle threats, ex
cept perhaps to her brother. Jia Chang was the choreographer of the beautiful, sometimes desperate, dances the Keiko and the Jonah pulled across the cosmos. Losing her would be like stripping away part of the ships’ souls.

  “If that’s what it takes,” Drift said, and now Jenna could hear the hitch in his voice, because the Captain recognised what had just happened. “Just get us somewhere I can find a new pilot to take us to New Samara, Jia. Just do that for us, and be on your way, if that’s what you want. We need the ransom for Rourke, or this has all been for nothing. But every cent that we have left over—that is yours, to get you home. To get you both home.”

  Jia stared at him for a few seconds. Then her mouth twisted. “Get out of my cockpit.”

  Drift nodded once and turned away. Now Jenna saw his natural eye, and saw the tears sparkling in it. Then the Captain slipped past Apirana and was gone, his long stride heading towards the cargo bay where, presumably, Muradov was moving Kuai’s body to the mortuary compartment most ships had in case a crew member died unexpectedly on a voyage.

  “I’ll need someone in the engine room,” Jia said, eyeing Apirana challengingly. He nodded in his turn.

  “I’ll do what I can.” He turned to Jenna and bent down, and suddenly, she had been enveloped in his huge arms. She hugged him back, fighting the feeling she always had that she might as well be trying to encircle a mighty oak with her arms.

  “Thank you,” Apirana breathed into her ear. “That must’ve took real guts.”

  “It was only a few hundred tons being held aloft by controlled explosions,” Jenna murmured back, trying to take refuge in humour. “No big deal.”

  He snorted. “Show-off.” Then he withdrew and ducked through the doorway, heading aft towards the engine room that, until now, had always been Kuai’s domain. A flashing light on her terminal caught Jenna’s attention, and she looked down at it.

  “We’re being hailed,” she told Jia, trying to keep her tone businesslike. “Security frequencies.”

  “Fuck ’em,” Jia retorted, taking three steps to the pilot’s seat and dropping into it. She reached down and did something with the emergency panel, and suddenly, the alarms cut out as sharply as they’d started. The sudden quiet seemed almost ominous.

  Jia reached out and picked up her hat. Then she spun her seat around and hurled the hat with a snarl at where the Captain normally sat, before swivelling back to place her hands on the drive levers.

  “Fuck ’em all,” Jia Chang said into the silence. Then she rammed the levers forwards, and the Jonah leapt away, climbing faster and harder than Jenna could remember it every doing before, into the sky towards where the Keiko sat in orbit overhead.

  HOMEWARD BOUND

  Drift had half-expected Jia to spend every waking moment she wasn’t actually flying the Keiko beside the cryo-cabinet that held Kuai’s body. Instead the pilot had almost literally walled herself off in the cockpit, snapping at anyone who’d entered and only leaving for food or comfort breaks. She’d even been sleeping in her chair, and certainly hadn’t washed: After a couple of days, Drift didn’t even want to enter the cockpit simply due to the smell. As a result, he hadn’t been too sure of exactly where they were until the Keiko’s klaxon sounded and he felt the shudder as his freighter powered down its Alcubierre drive and began moving under its thrusters again.

  He looked at his chrono. Five days since they’d left, more or less: not long enough for them to have got back to New Samara, no matter how hard Jia had pushed it. That presumably meant she hadn’t had a change of heart, and Drift’s sank a little further in response.

  “Where are we?” he asked Jenna. The two of them had been sitting in companionable silence in the Keiko’s common room while the Chief had been fiddling around trying to fix the holo–chess board, prodding at circuits and muttering under his breath in Russian.

  “Hold on, just recalibrating,” Jenna told him, checking her wrist terminal. “Okay, we’re at the Stranno Bazar; it’s a Red Star waystation.” She looked up at him. “It looks like it’s not far off the straight route between Zhongtu and New Samara.”

  “Thank God for that,” Drift muttered, pushing himself up out of his seat. “Any idea how long before we dock?”

  “You’re better off asking Jia,” Jenna said apologetically.

  “Let’s assume I don’t want to do that.”

  Jenna grimaced. “Fine, but this isn’t exactly a fine-tuned locator.” She studied her wrist for a moment. “Maybe half an hour? Depending on exactly how eager Jia is to get shot of us and how bothered she is about being pulled up for dangerous flying.”

  “So call it twenty minutes then.” Drift nodded. “Chief, with me: We’re getting Kuai ready. Jenna, you get the cash, and sort out what we need to ransom Tamara. Anything over that goes with Jia. I made her a promise, and I’m damn well keeping this one.”

  “You’re sure she’s leaving?” Jenna asked in a small voice.

  “We don’t need fuel, we don’t need supplies, and we’re on a tight schedule,” Drift said, trying to ignore the bitter taste in his mouth. “There’s no reason for Jia to have us stop here unless she intends to take her leave. She’s kept her side of the bargain when I’m sure she’d have much rather flown us into a star or something. I don’t want to see her go, but if she is going, then we don’t have time to waste. We get everything ready for her, then she either leaves or stays. It’s her call.”

  He made his way to the door and palmed it open. Muradov hurried up behind him and followed him through, and they set off for the infirmary together.

  “I don’t suppose this has been the best introduction to your new career,” Drift commented as they headed for the elevator.

  “It could have run more smoothly,” Muradov conceded. “Overall, however, I still prefer this to being in the army.”

  Drift looked at him in surprise. “Really? I’d have thought it had all been a little . . . chaotic.”

  “I cannot dispute that,” the Chief snorted. “But there is an important difference, Captain.” They reached the metal doors, and he pressed the button to call the maglev car up. “The military would abandon an element of their force left in a predicament such as Tamara Rourke is. They would cut their losses and press on. You and your crew did not.”

  “We haven’t got her back yet,” Drift said darkly as the doors slid open in front of them. “And we lost two more in the process.”

  “I did not say we have her back,” Muradov corrected him gently. “Simply that we have not given up on her. And I was sad to lose Kuai, but Jia leaving is her choice, and cannot be laid at your door. I recall that she was most determined to help Rourke. In fact, she shouted her brother down even though he was very clear what he felt the risks were. I suspect her desire to leave is just as much due to guilt on her part as it is anger at you, or the rest of us.”

  Drift raised his eyebrows as they stepped into the elevator. “You know, I hadn’t actually thought about that.”

  “I suspected as much,” Muradov said. “But it is another reason why I am glad to be on your crew, Captain. I know better than many that life can be brutal and short in this galaxy. I am happy to have companions who show each other loyalty and are quicker to blame themselves than others.”

  Drift grunted something noncommittal and scratched at the skin around his right eye, not quite sure what to say for a moment.

  “I must confess,” Muradov added quietly, “I am not without my own guilt. Had I acted quicker, Kuai might still be alive.”

  Drift opened his mouth to tell the Chief that it was his plan that had been at fault, then shut it again. Competing to take the blame wasn’t much more useful than trying to place it elsewhere.

  “I think we can all take lessons from this,” he said instead as the elevator doors opened and they stepped out. “None of this would have happened if I hadn’t taken that first job from Sergei Orlov, but it seemed like a sound prospect. Still, I should have known better. So from now on, I steer clear of his type
, no matter how appealing the work may be. Way back when, I set out to make an honest career for myself. It never seemed to pay enough, but maybe I just should have tried harder or stuck at it for longer. Besides, it’s not like these get-rich-quick schemes have ever worked out that well.”

  Muradov cocked an eyebrow at him as they opened the door to the infirmary. “You are ‘going straight’?”

  “Again,” Drift said, and sighed. “Let’s see if I can stick to it, this time.” He crossed the infirmary floor to a contoured metal wall and activated the release. A part of the wall about two feet square detached with a click and slid out smoothly, revealing itself to be one end of a cryo-casket that could keep a body preserved more or less indefinitely, assuming you remembered to replace the power source every month or so. He checked the readings—all okay—and activated the maglev so he and Muradov could easily steer it to the docking hatch where Jia would connect them to the waystation.

  He didn’t activate the viewing plate to see Kuai’s face, not even for one last time. He’d prefer to remember him in life.

  “You are certain this will work for her?” Muradov asked dubiously. “The last thing I would want is for Jia to be arrested due to an irregularity over the body she is transporting.”

  “Jenna’s cooked up the best fake documentation she can, with your help,” Drift reminded him. “Anyone who checks this should find all they need to tell them that Kuai’s death has been officially recorded and registered and that the body has been released to the family.”

  “Then let us pray that will be good enough,” Muradov said soberly. He took the other end of the casket, and they began to manoeuvre it around the two sickbeds set in the middle of the floor. Drift had often wondered about the mind-set behind setting the morgue in the wall of the infirmary, but economy of space was always a concern on vessels like this, and he supposed practicality had won out in the design process.

  “So what now?” Muradov asked a few seconds later.