Embustero- Pale Boundaries

by Scott Cleveland

  Markland, on the other hand, had vehemently opposed bringing the dirtsider aboard even after his service to the Embustero’s crewmen, and had pressed for a quick lethal injection before he recovered enough to pose any further threat.

  Fortunately, it was Shadrack who would have the last word, though his decision depended on the dirtsider’s answers to certain questions.

  Two week’s worth of forced bed rest left Terson Reilly plenty of time to ponder the twists of fate leading to his current predicament—when he wasn’t otherwise preoccupied with the puzzle of how to reach a random itch inside his ear, or on the tip of his nose, or at the corner of his eye with his wrists secured to the bedrails.

  He wondered how things might have turned out had he and Virene resisted the temptation to cruise beyond Nivia’s strict coastal boundaries, or notified the authorities anonymously upon sighting the shuttle’s escape pod tumbling out of the sky instead of mounting a rescue attempt themselves. His mind turned to those two events over and over, because everything that followed hinged upon that juxtaposition of timing and action. A few minutes in either direction, a more cautious attitude, and those responsible for the shuttle’s destruction would never have had reason to fear that Terson or Virene had learned anything threatening.

  In point of fact, neither Terson nor Virene had any inkling that the crash was anything more than a tragic accident. They went back to school, moved into their new home, and applied to reverse their contraception and start a family, all the while oblivious of the criminals—the Onjin—stalking them until the attempted kidnapping that ended in Virene’s death.

  The ensuing investigation led Terson and Maalan Bragg, a federal police officer, back to the crash site and into a trap set by the Onjin and collaborators inside Nivia’s government. Terson narrowly escaped, forced to leave the gravely wounded Bragg behind, and fled to sea in a damaged and sinking boat where he was rescued by Minzoku sailors and finally learned what lay behind his misfortune.

  The Minzoku were descendants of a devolved, pre-Commonwealth colony who’d been brought to Nivia as slave labor by the Onjin. Den Tun, their leader, had engineered a plot to smuggle information off of Nivia on a cargo shuttle to bring their plight to the attention of Commonwealth authorities. But his own niece, a traitorous officer who’d taken an Onjin lover, had sabotaged the shuttle. Den Tun asked Terson to carry the information to a sympathetic gaijin, as they called Nivia’s other inhabitants.

  He agreed, but the Onjin were waiting and, though Terson managed to take revenge on the man directly responsible for Virene’s death, he fled into the Great Northern Preserve where a blizzard nearly killed him before his rescue by a band of poachers.

  The medic who’d attended Terson each day since he regained consciousness entered the room and asked the same cheery question that began their previous encounters: “And how are we feeling today?”

  “Well enough to piss without the tube in my dick,” Terson snapped back before adding: “I’m hungry.”

  “That’s a change for the better,” she replied, “though it hasn’t done much for your disposition. I’ll let you have your hands, if you promise not to take an old lady hostage.”

  Terson looked at her sharply. Her light blue eyes twinkled back at him from beneath gray bangs. She was playing with him; she hadn’t removed his restraints since he arrived, even considering how weak he’d been. “I promise.”

  The twinkle sharpened to a knowing gleam. “You promise forever, or just as long as it suits you?” He saw something in her eyes that led him to decide that she was not a woman to cross.

  “As long as it suits me.”

  “At least we know you’re not a liar,” she said. She released his restraints and walked out of sight into the next room. Terson rubbed his wrists, careful of the intravenous tube taped to his arm. The medic was the only person he’d seen, and wouldn’t give him her name or the name of the ship. She’d even stripped the nametag and patch from her shipsuit.

  She reappeared holding a sipper cup. “Here you go,” she said. “Hold this down and you can have a cracker.”

  “What kind of trick will get me a sandwich?” The liquid was clear, cold and fruity without being sweet. He sipped it slowly while the medic changed his urine bag. She was in her mid-fifties, he guessed. Her figure, though certainly not youthful, was trim and fit. He finished the cup and handed it back. “Ready for that cracker, ma’am.”

  “Give it a little while,” she advised. “Let your system get working again. The captain wants to see you, too, and you won’t look dignified with crumbs on your chin.”

  “Captain who?” Terson probed.

  “Shadrack,” a deep voice replied from the hatchway. The newcomer was arguably the largest human being Terson had ever seen in the flesh. White, even teeth flashed within his thick, black beard. “You’re aboard the Embustero. The doc here, Megan Druski, you’ve already met. This is Markland, first mate.” Markland, of normal proportions, wasn’t smiling.

  “Well?” Shadrack said after a moment’s silence.

  “Well, what?”

  “My crewmen went to a lot of trouble to get you here alive,” Shadrack informed him. “You mind telling me exactly what they got me involved in?”

  “That’s my business,” Terson replied, looking the large man dead in the eye. “And since I didn’t ask them to haul me up here you know where to stick it if you’ve got a problem.”

  Markland stepped around his captain. “Watch your mouth,” he glowered. “Nobody will look at us twice if you turn up in orbit without a suit!”

  “You could have spaced me days ago,” Terson shot back, “What’s stopping you?”

  “Enough!” Shadrack barked. “My crew couldn’t have made it out of those mountains without your help,” Shadrack said, “and the doc says you’re not a dirtsider—not from here, anyway, so I don’t think you really give a damn what we were doing. But I still have to decide what to do with you.” He motioned to Druski, who wheeled over a medical cart with the contents of Terson’s smuggler’s belt arranged across it.

  “O’Brien said you go by Joseph Pelletier,” he said, holding up one set of ID and papers. “But this one says Terson Reilly,” indicating a duplicate in all but name. “What happens if I call back to Nivia and tell them I’ve got a dirtsider aboard with these names?”

  “You’d have to explain where I came from,” Terson replied.

  “Stowaway,” Shadrack shrugged.

  “You’re not that stupid,” Terson smiled. “I’ll sell you out as fast as you do me.”

  “Ah, an understanding takes shape,” the spacer nodded. “I keep my mouth shut; you’re willing to do the same.”

  “That about covers it,” Terson agreed.

  “So what do we call you?”

  “Joseph Pelletier fits well enough.”

  “Joseph it is, then.” Terson assumed that the interview had achieved its purpose, but Shadrack picked up the next item: Virene’s picture. “Pretty girl,” he noted. “Sister? Girlfriend?”

  An ache bloomed in Terson’s chest; his breath shuddered despite his effort to remain impassive, drawing a suspicious look from Markland and raised eyebrows from his captain. “Wife,” Terson acknowledged. “She’s dead.”

  “That explains the ring here,” Shadrack said, setting the photo down with exaggerated care. “My condolences.”

  “You kill her?” Markland demanded. “Is that what this is all about?”

  “You can go straight to hell,” Terson exclaimed, “and fuck yourself when you get there!” The unexpected touch of Druski’s hand on his shoulder, fingers tightened in both reassurance and warning, cut him off again in mid-breath.

  “I didn’t agree to an inquisition,” the medic said quietly, but there was no mistaking the iron in her voice.

  “That’s not your call, Druski,” Markland snapped.

  “It’s my infirmary,” she replied, not even looking at Shadrack, “he’s my patient; I’m making it my call.”

/>   “The master of the vessel cares to continue,” Shadrack announced, “if the two of you are done pissing about.” The medic and the first mate lapsed into silence, though it was clear to Terson that the argument wasn’t over, merely tabled.

  “You could put me back down at God’s Saucer,” Terson suggested. “That’s where I was supposed to end up anyway.” It might still be possible to deliver the evidence of the Minzoku’s plight, as he’d agreed to do.

  “We’re already halfway to Caliban,” Shadrack said.

  “That works, too,” Terson said. At least the ship hadn’t left the Nivian system entirely.

  “Our last stop heading out-system is A-30-Sierra,” Shadrack countered. “We can drop you there.”

  Terson nodded. It wasn’t like he had any real choice in the matter. Shadrack started to turn away, stopped. “Are you willing to work to cover your passage?”

  “Better than spending the trip in here.”

  Shadrack nodded. “Meg, get him able-bodied.”

  The medic followed him out and returned a moment later with ship’s patch and nametag back where they belonged. “Good boy,” she said. “Here’s your cracker.”

  Markland followed the captain down the corridor and into the lift.

  “What’s on your mind?” Shadrack asked.

  “You told him too much,” Markland said stiffly, “and he should be in the brig until we get rid of him.”

  “He won’t learn anything that can harm us,” Shadrack replied. “And if we get rid of him it won’t be anywhere this side of a jump.”

  “If?”

  “I’ll see how he does before I decide.”

  “This is a bad idea, Shad.”

  “You saw his ratings,” Shadrack said. “How many pilots do you know with as much atmosphere time as he’s got? And he knows how to use his head or we wouldn’t have gotten our people back.”

  “Those ratings are just as fake as his identification!” Markland exclaimed. “We don’t know anything about him!”

  Shadrack stopped and turned on his second in command. “We’ve been double-shifting for three years! We haven’t replaced anyone since the accident. It’s time to pull ourselves back together, and we’ve taken on questionable people in the past.”

  “All more or less voluntarily,” Markland countered. “We’ve never actually shanghaied anyone. You saw how volatile he is.”

  “You let me worry about that,” Shadrack ordered, effectively ending the discussion. Markland was an excellent right hand, tough and capable of enforcing ship’s policy without sympathy or remorse, but he often failed to acknowledge abstract certainties until faced with concrete obstacles, and by then it was usually too late to avoid them.

  The Embustero could not remain in its comfortable, dead-end niche indefinitely. The system of scams and petty theft they employed to maintain solvency without drawing attention was inherently fragile, and therefore destined to fail. A bloody snowstorm had nearly brought disaster down on them, for God’s sake!

  There came a point in any illicit endeavor where success meant walking away, and Shadrack had the nagging feeling that that time was close at hand.

  God’s Saucer, Nivia: 2710:01:03 Standard

  Cormack MacLeod pressed his scrawny frame against the bulkhead of a half-gutted utility launch as a cold gust of wind whistled through his repair yard, the fine dust collected during its journey across the dry lake bed driving visibility to zero.

  He held his breath and squeezed his right eye shut against the abrasive particulate, using the grimy heal of one hand to cover the empty, scarred socket that once contained the left until the cloud passed by. If not for that moment of inattentiveness, Cormack might have spied the man now standing inside his gate in time to scamper into the maze of stripped spaceframes and custom hull molds surrounding his shop.

  The man wore a thin overcoat to protect his suit from the dust and carried an attaché case, a combination that could only mean a lawyer, a process server or some other officer of the court. He approached with the confidence of a man accustomed to God’s Saucer’s weather and inhabitants, slipping his goggles to his forehead and his filter mask to his throat.

  “Mr. MacLeod?”

  “He ain’t here,” Cormack replied.

  “I see,” the man smiled thinly, “you must be his twin. Can we step inside?”

  “Aye.” Cormack walked through the hatch of the hulk he'd been working on. His visitor followed as if that had been his expectation. “What d'ye want?”

  “My name is Sherman Jones. I'm an associate with Barnes and Reuter, Attorneys at Law. Here are my credentials.” Cormack spared the documents barely a glance before handing them back. “I'm here regarding Miles Stoyko's property.”

  Cormack had many reasons to avoid lawyers, but he never imagined that anything to do with Miles Stoyko would be one of them. How could the estate of an indigent spacer afford a lawyer, and why hadn't he employed the services of Barnes and Reuter before he died? “He signed a contract; he couldn’t pay,” Cormack said. “He forfeited his ship, simple as that.”

  “My clients have no interest in his ship,” Jones explained. “Mr. Stoyko possessed a flight data recorder which my clients were negotiating to obtain.”

  “I wouldn't know about that,” Cormack claimed.

  “Mr. MacLeod, let's not quibble,” Jones said directly. “Mr. Stoyko informed my clients of his intent to offer the device to you in exchange for his ship, which you acknowledge you have. He died outside your gate without so much as a scrap of paper in his pockets.”

  Cormack drew himself up indignantly, the top of his head barely reaching the lawyer’s chin. “What are ye accusing me of, here?”

  “Nothing; I merely offer you the same opportunity they offered Miles Stoyko.”

  “Aye, and what opportunity would that be?”

  “I'm not authorized to discuss that until I verify that you have the recorder,” Jones replied matter-of-factly. “Do you, or not?”

  Cormack nearly denied it, a reflex vital to anyone who trafficked in used parts with questionable provenances. But Jones was a lawyer, not a cop, and under Nivian law could be disbarred for misrepresenting his purpose, so Cormack nodded instead. “Aye, I've got it.” He led Jones to a bin of electronic salvage and rummaged around until he found it.

  Jones compared the serial number to one of the papers in his attaché case and nodded. “I'm authorized to pay you ten thousand euros if you release it to me immediately. Mr. Stoyko claimed to know the location of the vessel it came from, as well. If you are privy to that information, I'm authorized to issue an additional ten thousand euros in escrow contingent upon the eventual recovery of the vessel.”

  Cormack might have held out for more, had he not already known that the device was burned out and useless. It was nothing but scrap, but if some gullible blueblood wanted to buy a treasure map, who was Cormack MacLeod to deny him that right? “Your client's none too smart, I ken. Every bar in every port's got a bum that'll sell ye the recorder of a treasure-laden derelict.”

  “I have no doubt that you are correct,” Jones agreed, “but they’ve chosen to purchase this one and tie up a significant sum pending the veracity of any location you may provide.”

  “If Stoyko knew, he took the secret with’im to hell,” Cormack said, “but I’ll sell ye every flight data recorder I got for ten thousand.”

  “This one will be sufficient,” Jones said. He opened a flap on the outside lid of his attaché to access the touchpad and offered it for Cormack to enter his account code. “Thank you, Mr. MacLeod, and good day.”

  Cormack went back to stripping the launch hull, his hands working on their own while his mind ruminated over Miles Stoyko and the trouble the hobo had brought down on him, trouble that still hadn’t been resolved. The unexpected ten thousand helped, but wouldn’t go nearly far enough to cover the costs he’d incurred to repair the man’s baffle-rider, much less the freight charges to boost it back into orbit.

&nbs
p; Cormack might have ended up a penniless beggar himself if not for the timely appearance of a spacer with a cargo sled in need of repair—a sled loaded with modular freezers full of poached bushmeat and clues leading him to discover the true identity of the supposed Ladybird. The finder’s fee offered by the skip-tracers searching for the Embustero would have paid off his debts with a handsome amount left over, but the damned skip-tracer was cautious enough to withhold fifty percent until one of its own agents verified Cormack’s information.

  Meanwhile he was stuck with more debt than the repaired baffle-rider was worth as well as a lesson reminding him to demand hard cash up front.

  Stoyko offered up nothing but a flight data recorder as payment and a woeful tale to justify his deceit. Part of his story was entirely plausible: a pirate jumped the vessel in whose baffles he rode at an off-chart navpoint; the combatants destroyed each other and seriously damaged Stoyko’s little ship in a short, vicious firefight.

  It was what came next that led Cormack to deem Miles Stoyko a lying, stir-crazy crackpot: the hobo claimed to have cobbled together a viable jump-drive platform from the remains of one of the vessels that worked long enough for a single Hail-Mary leap back to the main shipping lanes. It was the stuff of legends, a feat that Cormack doubted even he could pull off. The story probably earned Stoyko liters of free drinks in station bars, repeated until his pickled brain couldn't tell the difference between the con and the truth.

  Sherman Jones’ visit was proof enough that someone had fallen for the treasure map routine—unless his client wasn’t as interested in Stoyko’s story as the device itself. Cormack had assumed that Jones’ client had learned the recorder’s serial number from Stoyko and simply needed to verify that Cormack had turned over the same device—but what if the client already knew the serial number? What if they were looking for a specific ship, and suspected that the vessel Stoyko described in his story was it?