Shadow Run

by Michael Miller

  “You can’t follow any of the directions in the Tantios cookbooks; their measurements are all…” Eton stopped midsentence, his face growing sober as he looked over my shoulder.

  Qole was there, looking calm and serious. “No, you’re supposed to follow instructions. Or, how about orders? What do you say, Eton?”

  He didn’t answer at first, but Arjan, instantly awoken by the sound of her voice, popped up beside him. “Qole, I’m so sorry. Look—”

  “Save it. We’re about to land on Nirmana to fuel up and get some repairs done, and I need both of you to make yourselves useful. You get one more chance to stay on the ship, if you want it. Which means no arguing, no fighting, and nothing but nodding your head and saying yes, Captain and no, Captain.”

  Arjan nodded. “Got it. Yes, Captain.”

  “And you, Eton?”

  The man took a deep breath. “Yes, Captain, I understand.”

  Qole hit the big red button next to the airlock door and it hissed open. I flinched.

  “Well, great.” She put her hands on her hips. “All I have to do to get you two thick skulls to listen is throw you around and put you in a cell, I guess. Now that we’re a crew again, all of you shake hands.”

  I grimaced. Eton’s handshaking hurt, and would likely especially hurt now. Not so great timing on our chat, after all. “Must we? I feel very at peace with everyone already.” Qole gave me a look, and I reached out. “Okay, okay.”

  Eton hesitated, glanced at Qole, and then took it. To my surprise, he didn’t crush it. But he did hold on to it for a moment longer than necessary and look me in the eyes. I understood as clearly as though he had spoken: one sign of ill intent on my part, and he’d happily try to kill me again, whatever the consequences.

  Arjan shook my hand, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. The entire experience seemed to have hit him the hardest; Qole and this ship were nearly all that he cared about in life. I doubted she’d ever threatened to take it away from him before.

  Qole nodded, satisfied. “Good. Remember, I don’t need to work with people who can’t voice opinions, but there’s a difference between sharing your thoughts and not following orders. I know you don’t trust him, but if you’re going to be on this ship, it’s me you have to trust. Now, you”—she pointed at me—“are going with Basra to sell our Shadow and make sure he doesn’t get mugged in the process. I want those canisters out of my hold. You two”—she jerked a thumb over her shoulder—“get cleaned up and ready to get the Kaitan fueled and shipshape. We don’t have much time, and we have to make this quick.”

  A series of suggestions and considerations rang out briefly, until Qole raised both eyebrows and crossed her arms. I shut my mouth along with the rest.

  A few hours later I was wearing the same disguise I had used on Alaxak, and Basra and I were on our way. The landing bay the harbormaster had assigned us was at the top of a roughly eight-hundred-foot tower composed almost entirely of docking bays and a web of walkways all in dangerous proximity.

  “Do you think Qole is just trying to get me away from Eton?” I asked Basra as we descended one of the gangplanks leading from where the Kaitan had landed. She had reverted to one hundred percent captain mode, all signs of the personable girl I’d talked to the night before gone. I couldn’t deny that I found that interesting in its own right, but I couldn’t stop thinking about our conversation.

  Why had I taken her hand and ruined everything?

  “Maybe. Or maybe she knows that making these transactions carries its own set of risks.” Basra’s reply was entirely unsatisfactory. Then again, the only one I would have properly appreciated would have been, Absolutely, Nev, because you inspire such terror in him. And also, there is no way she’s trying to avoid you, in case you were wondering. Here, have a refreshing beverage.

  Instead, he glanced at me again, and then to the bag I carried slung over my shoulder. “Do you think it’s wise to carry your blade with you? If someone saw it, they would recognize it and ask uncomfortable questions.”

  I shook my head. “Once you earn a Disruption Blade, you try to keep it with you at all times, and I’ve been failing enough at that. Besides, I think I’ve shown I can keep it secret. Why in the systems are we walking on these instead of taking a turbolift?” I asked, changing the topic.

  Basra was leading me down the gangplanks that connected to an increasingly complex series of catwalks. Low fencing and solid plate flooring gave way to woven rope and grating; it would have been dizzying at this height, but the city below felt too abstract to register. It was a precarious and crowded system as we danced around groups of workers carrying equipment and supplies or just loitering on corners and talking.

  “Most of the harbors on the outskirts of the city are old and cheap, which also makes them the most crowded. The turbolifts are only used at certain points of the day to transport heavy cargo in order to prevent them from breaking down. Either that,” Basra amended, “or they are already broken down. If you don’t mind attracting attention you can bribe your way on, but I think we can manage.”

  I glanced around at the hive of activity. Other towers, their edges like jagged combs from all the docking bays, were constantly disgorging a wide variety of smaller freight ships. “Do you know this all from a previous life? The Kaitan couldn’t possibly have gotten this far before now.”

  “I grew up here,” Basra said, ushering me through a doorway that looked identical to the others. “Tell me, how did a prince of the Dracorte family, the heir no less, manage to land in the outskirts of the system by himself without an army of bodyguards?”

  I paused, not due to an unwillingness to talk, but because of the vista that had just opened up in front of us. My view from the landing pad had been obscured by the Kaitan before Basra had whisked us on our way, but now I had an unobstructed perspective of Ranta, the largest city on Nirmana.

  I had been to Ranta before. The Nirmana family, renowned for their skill at all things financial—stock markets, banking systems, secure transaction concepts—had spent a measure of their immeasurable wealth making Ranta one of the most beautiful cities in all the systems…along with outright buying the planet itself and renaming it after their family. Nestled in a rain forest at the foothills of mountains that had remained largely untouched by drones, the city was a wonder of architecture, learning, and art. In my studies, I had visited their Econom Academy on multiple occasions to listen to lectures or participate in debates.

  In all my visits, I had never seen the outer city.

  Ranta itself was surrounded by a thick wall of carefully tended gardens. But just outside those gardens lived everyone else who wasn’t wealthy enough to dwell in the city proper. While Ranta was white and gleaming, the outer city was dull red from rust and the way the light caught a dusty haze. Industrial pipes belched fire and smoke, and jagged apartment blocks rose impossibly high out of an endless sea of tiny housing. It looked as though a giant child had tipped a bag of toy houses out into a pile on the floor, kicked them around, and left.

  In the Nirmana culture, economic worth was the ultimate value, and they supposedly believed that even the poorest citizens could become wealthy through hard work. But looking out over the rabble in front of me, I doubted every one of these people had been given the same opportunity as the royal progeny with whom I had studied.

  However the Nirmanas chose to govern their own planet should have been none of my business, but lately it was becoming mine. It was still the biggest news in recent history that the Nirmanas, the most economically powerful family, had entered into a marriage alliance with the Treznors, the most militarily powerful family. Now Treznor-Nirmana was one of the most powerful royal families in the systems, and they were obviously angling to place themselves higher on the list, at my family’s expense—and perhaps to more than just the detriment of my family. Who knew what would happen to citizens in the Dracorte system if the two most morally bankrupt families took our place near the top of the food chain?
It depressed me to see all the poverty in Ranta, and frightened me to think of what the Treznor-Nirmanas might do with more power in places like Alaxak.

  It also made me all the more determined to keep that from happening.

  “So this is home to you?” I asked.

  Basra shook his head. “No, I was born here. You didn’t answer my question.” He motioned to me and we headed down another set of ramps that descended toward ground level. “How did you get to Alaxak alone?”

  Taking all this in, I’d entirely forgotten he’d asked. “Right, my apologies. Qole asked as well, and the answer to both of you is: not easily. Not everyone in my family sees the potential in Alaxak that I do. It isn’t the only planet near sources of Shadow. We couldn’t get results from emissaries we sent, and no one seemed eager to return since it was across the system. Instead of leaving it alone, or hiring mercenaries who would do a less…delicate…job, I volunteered under the terms of my Dracorte Flight.”

  He cocked his head at me. “But why?”

  “For all the reasons I gave everyone on the ship.” I shrugged. “And perhaps because it took me so very far from home. What about you? What made you leave here?”

  “Circumstances,” Basra said vaguely, which irritated me after I’d given him such an honest answer. But there wasn’t time to press him. We had reached ground level and had arrived at what was evidently the singular turbolift servicing our tower. A skinny man in a dirty blue uniform, cradling an infopad, sat on a rickety office chair next to the turbolift doors. He looked entirely uninterested in us, his infopad, the turbolift, or anything else, for that matter. In contrast, the other character by the doors seemed too interested in everything. Short, squat, and with a blond buzz cut, he was dressed in a dirty old suit that had fit him once long ago. His small, deep-set eyes were bright and clever, and I didn’t like how he scanned me up and down at all.

  “Whaddya want?” the man in the blue uniform drawled. “Have a shipment?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Basra ignored the other seedy gentleman, and I pretended to study the surrounding skyline while keeping an eye on everyone. “We’ll be lowering twenty-one pallets a little later this afternoon. What times does the lift run?”

  “Every two hours. What’s the weight and content of your goods?”

  “Six-five thousand four hundred units, Shadow.”

  I didn’t know how often Shadow made its way through here, but the uniformed man didn’t even blink. “Very good. You’re on the list, and the lift will stop at your landing pad first. Thanks.”

  The other gentleman more than made up for his disinterest. “Shadow, is it? That’s quite a cargo, especially right now.” He pointed at a dusty feed of the planet’s financial station.

  We all paused to listen as an overly powdered announcer quoted the current headlines:

  Hersius Kartolus has begun purchasing a vast amount of commodities from Dracorte Industries, particularly Shadow. This bold move has driven the price sky-high in a play that analysts are calling both daring and foolish….

  “See?” the blond buzz cut said.

  Indeed. I managed not to shoot Basra an incredulous look. Not only had he gotten the jump on financial news regarding my own family but also news originating from Hersius Kartolus, one of the wealthiest and most secretive people in the galaxy…and a significant investor in my family’s business, second only to us ourselves and Treznor-Nirmana. No one saw the elusive fellow often, though I recalled meeting a white-haired, wiry gentleman at a banquet long ago.

  Could Basra possibly be working for Hersius on the side? That would explain why he had to lay low, but…Basra was good, but that would be bordering on utter financial genius.

  Blond buzz cut looked us over for the twentieth time. “Where are you coming from?”

  “Just traded with some fishermen from Alaxak.” Basra smiled politely. “Now, if you’ll excuse us.”

  We headed off down the street, and I could feel the man’s eyes on my back.

  “Why did you mention Shadow?” I hissed. “Or Alaxak? They’ll be dying of curiosity.”

  “Shadow isn’t as uncommon here as you think, and avoidance breeds curiosity,” Basra explained. “They can trace the ship number as being registered in Alaxak regardless, since Qole does things legally. Hiding its origin would be inviting scrutiny.”

  I was uncomfortably reminded of how vulnerable our position was here. The sooner we were gone, the better.

  Basra led me with the complete assurance of familiarity. We wound our way through narrow streets that overwhelmed me with life. If I had been thinking smugly on the failed economic policies that had led to the outer city forming, I hadn’t been prepared for the sheer excitement and variety that was thrust at us at every step. Merchants hawked their wares, street performers hawked their acts, people hawked themselves, and children tugged at us, alternately attempting to beg or to sharpen their pickpocketing skills.

  My thoughts were interrupted by Basra ducking into a small door with a sign that simply said Exotic Matters—material and theoretical, available here.

  After a brief conversation with the young, dead-eyed man behind the counter, we were escorted to a back office. It was empty except for slatted windows, a temperature control unit that kept it so cold fog was forming on the windows, and a corpulent woman sitting on an office chair that looked like it was just about ready to surrender.

  “Basra, Basra, Basra, you beautiful creature, you. I never thought I’d see you again when I’d heard you left.”

  “Mother Orr, the pleasure is mutual,” Basra murmured, pulling up another rickety chair and settling down in it. I remained standing, arms crossed. The entire situation was disquieting. I couldn’t imagine conducting business of any importance in an office that would have looked abandoned if it weren’t inhabited by someone who seemed merely unable to leave. On top of that, even in the chill air, I was still sweating profusely, as the city’s temperature had sunk into me. I was entirely overdressed.

  “Hm, feeling more masculine today, are we, lassie? Looks good on you. And who is this?” “Mother Orr” eyed me. Her expression seemed devoid of interest, but her scrutiny was thorough. “Very tasty. Is he yours?” She chortled to herself.

  Basra ignored almost all of what she said, which I was realizing was one of his strengths. “I recently made an advantageous trade for a shipment of Shadow from a captain who was eager to divest. Because you were always my favorite, I thought of you first.”

  “Favorite? You had favorites?” She snorted. “Let me tell you something, my lass, when I processed the first years at Number One’s recruitment complex, I wasn’t anyone’s favorite. Oh no, big ol’ mean Mother Orr, am I right? Just stomping around giving us hell. Boo-hoo, we’re all indentured servants. Well”—she threw her hands up to encompass him—“just look at you now. Peddling Shadow and cavorting with hot, young, lithe…men.” She looked me up and down again and grinned. “Let me tell you, sonny, you could make me…ahem, yourself a pretty penny.”

  It was possible a corner of my eyelid twitched from a profound desire to raise my eyebrows. Everyone in the systems knew of the Big Two—ancient towers in Ranta that trained accountants from childhood. Parents indentured their children, who then had to purchase their freedom at exorbitant rates. Only if you were good with finances did you get out. Very good. And the Number One tower provided only the best training to the most skilled…who consequently had a much higher sum to work off. The thought of a young Basra in such an environment, contending with this creature who was looking at me like a piece of meat at the market, made me even more uncomfortable.

  But Number One was definitely the type of place to spit out a financial genius. One that would drop right into the eagerly waiting hands of rabid recruiters. Maybe Hersius Kartolus had somehow snatched up Basra.

  “True, it’s not just my fondness that brought me to you,” Basra responded, ignoring roughly half of what she’d said this time. “My previous buyer and I had a disagreemen
t, and I’ve found myself wanting to sell to another party. I’m in something of a hurry, so I was willing to go to someone who I knew wouldn’t give me as high a price.”

  “Oh? What price was this ‘other buyer’ offering you?” Mother Orr narrowed her eyes. “Does this ‘other buyer’ have a name, or did you just invent them?”

  “I’d rather not name the sum,” he said, inclining his head, “as they would want me to be discreet. Suffice it to say, I’m aware that you possess fewer means and greater shrewdness.”

  “Fewer means?” She glared. “Let me tell you, lassie, going up the ranks as quickly as you did gave you an attitude I’m not sure I approve of.” She yanked open a drawer, withdrew a dirty rag, and wiped her sweating brow. Then she used that to wipe down the condensation on her infopad, which she held up to her face closely, finger hovering over the screen. “But you’re damned right you’ll profit less from me. Fair but harsh, that’s my motto. You’ll get what you deserve. I’m still looking out for my students, you know.”

  Basra steepled his fingers. “I’ll take fifty percent over market price.”

  She guffawed. “You will, will you? How about I give you fifty percent off the market price?”

  “No. I’m not interested in losing my shirt, although I’m willing to lose some. Don’t forget, I’m delivering this to you with no third party—you would normally need to buy from a wholesaler. You would be paying market price plus ten percent no matter what you do.”

  “Fine, then that’s what I’ll give you,” she retorted.

  He remained silent, eyes fixed on her. She looked from him to me and back again. I stared at both of them, fascinated; I had the strange feeling they were conducting a mental argument with one another, both understanding what the other would say next.