“It’s always the dispatchers…” the officer said, shaking his head. “They sit in a nice, well-appointed office, cabinets filled with brandy, and a leisurely walk from their homes to sleep in their own beds each night, and yet they can’t be trusted to sign off on the proper travel orders. So they send us to the middle of nowhere as if we didn’t have someplace better to be.”
They reached the communication room and slipped inside. It was barely an office. There wasn’t even a chair to sit in, nor were there any phlo-lights. The officer twisted the knob for a small oil lamp to illuminate the room. A plank bridged the space between two short filing cabinets to form a makeshift desk. The walls were utterly covered with little cubby holes with names and/or locations jotted down on little placards in grease pencil. Various books stood in an orderly row along the back of the plank. Digger’s eyes fixed upon a small, well-worn booklet with flaking gold-leaf lettering on its spine. Communication Codes and Structures: Sixth Edition.
The officer pulled a poorly printed message blank—little more than a small sheet of paper with a grid of prelabeled boxes—and dipped his pen into the inkwell.
“Name?” he said.
Digger glanced down at the name embroidered on his disguise. E. Albin.
“Eldon Albin,” he said.
The officer jotted it down. “We’ve got a man here by the name of Albin. Ernest Albin.”
“Y-yes. There were seven Albins in my class at the academy. Common name.”
“Commanding officer?” he said.
“You’d know better than me. I just arrived.”
“No, your commanding officer. Remember, you’re not on our crew.”
“But I am now, that’s the problem.”
The officer glared at Digger. “Central dispatch may not know what they are doing, but I bloody well do. You haven’t been signed over yet, so this is on your current commanding officer.”
“I… don’t you think my commanding officer has tried to straighten this out already? Help me out here.”
“Fine…” The officer jotted down Section Commander Dickel. “I’ll still need your CO, so they’ll be able to track the original order.”
“Right, right,” Digger said. He glanced about. Sweat trickled down his brow. He hoped the officer would attribute it to the climb to get here.
“Hurry up, I was in the middle of something before you showed up,” the officer said.
Digger spotted a wastebasket with a stack of old incoming and outgoing messages within. He blurted out the first name he could read.
“Lieutenant Gavers,” he said.
The officer jotted it down, then paused.
“Something wrong?” Digger asked.
“Why does that name sound familiar?” he said.
“Another common name.”
“I suppose. What was your assignment?”
“Standard scouting and rapid response.”
“Mmm. Might be better off on the new assignment.”
“Why?”
“Haven’t you been paying attention? Ray Island might be at the center of another clash. Things are likely to become unpleasantly active for the military.”
“Ray Island…”
“You must have been stationed on the West End, back toward Fugtown. Anyone who’s spent any time out east knows all about Ray Island. But I’m not here to teach history. I’m here to correct the mistakes of Lieutenant Gavers. Gavers… I know I just came across his name somewhere.”
The officer reached into the wastebasket and pulled the top few sheets from within. He flattened the top one to reveal the rest of the message Digger had poached the name from.
“‘To whom it may concern, we regret to inform you that Lieutenant Gavers has passed away’…” The officer looked to Digger. “I think you have some explaining to do.”
“Yes. Of course. This is all very simple, you see—”
In a snap motion, he grabbed the inkwell and splashed it in the officer’s face. While he was sputtering and clawing at his face, Digger grabbed the heaviest book from the desk and clubbed him with it. The officer stumbled back and knocked the oil lamp to the floor, immediately igniting a pile of paperwork.
Digger grabbed the protocol book along with a stack of messages awaiting delivery. His arms heaped with the stolen information, he dashed out of the office and down the steps.
Behind him, he heard the door fling open and the officer call out groggily, “Alert! Alert! Unauthorized officer on the grounds!”
“Coop and the others make it look so bloody easy to knock a man out,” Digger huffed.
He barreled through the doorway and sent one of the responding members of the ground crew toppling backward. At the initial call of alert, they’d begun shutting the main gate, but it was quite large and had only a two-person crew to move it. He dashed for it. Shots kicked up gravel that pelted his side as the ground crew opened fire. His chest burned. Digger’s stamina simply was not up to the task of navigating a tower and a courtyard at a full sprint. He dove through the gap just as the gate squealed shut. When he hit the ground, the stolen pages rushed into the air around him like dry leaves. He snatched as many as he could and stuffed them into the pockets of his coat. More shots rang out. He shuddered and ran in what he hoped was the direction of Coop and the ship. When he was not immediately gunned down, and didn’t notice any stray bullets striking the landscape around him, he realized something was wrong. Risking a glance over his shoulder confirmed his fears. They weren’t shooting at him, because Coop had powered up their two-man ship, which it turned out was in entirely the opposite direction.
The ship had no guns of its own, but that didn’t stop Coop from returning fire. At this distance, Digger could just make out the deckhand leaning aside from the controls and taking aim with his rifle. Shots rang out. Bullets punched neat holes in the envelope of the freshly arrived ship, sending brilliant green streamers of phlogiston into the sky. Then came sparks and steam as bullets punctured the lines leading to one of the propellers just as it was beginning to spin up. It sputtered to a stop, but its twin continued running, twisting the moored ship on its lines and causing the mooring towers to creak threateningly. Behind it, smoke was visible belching from one of the upper levels of the tower.
Gunfire, a blaze, and an out-of-control ship proved greater than the resolve of the ground crew. The armed men took cover. Coop took the controls again and aimed for Digger.
“What is he doing?” Digger cried. “He’s got to let me get farther away before he picks me up. He can’t risk landing. He can’t even risk slowing down. We’ll be sitting ducks this close!”
The rope ladder unfurled. Its end slapped to the ground and kicked up a trail of dust as it approached.
“… He isn’t going to land or slow down…” Digger realized.
He turned away from the ladder and poured what little energy he had into trying to match its speed. It didn’t do much good. When the ladder finally reached him and he grabbed on, it almost yanked his arm from its socket, but he held firm. After a few moments of being dragged along the ground, he was hauled into the air as Coop guided the ship upward.
Without a functional ship to give chase, in mere minutes Coop and Digger were slicing through the blackness of the fug-shrouded night, free and clear. Slowly, carefully, Digger hauled himself up the ladder until he could secure himself into the seat behind Coop.
“So. How’d that go?” Coop asked.
“I clubbed a man in the head and stole some of his things,” Digger said.
Coop glanced back at the distant point of light that was the facility. Some yellow and red had mixed with the green glow of the damaged ship.
“Was the fire on purpose?”
“Not entirely.”
“I reckon I could’ve done all that just fine, Digger. And without stealin’ a fella’s clothes.”
“I imagine you could have.”
“You at least get what we were after?”
“Er… I suspect no
t in the form we would have liked. They would have to be profoundly idiotic to trust any suspicious orders coming from that commander, and I’m not certain I’ve got the number of the inspector here, regardless.”
“You want I should look up where the next place like this is so we can give ’er another try?”
He gasped, his breath slow to return. “Not immediately, no.” Digger pulled the stolen book from his pocket. “There is the possibility,” he said, “that this will serve our purposes.”
#
The captain shook with laughter. His cheeks were a bit rosier than usual, and his mouth was curled into a broad, genuine grin.
“And that’s when your sister told me she’d pull every hair from my head with a pair of rusty pliers sooner’n see you and me walk the aisle together.”
Butch laughed heartily. A week of making the pub their headquarters had measurably improved the place. She’d moved some of her cooking utensils from the ship, and as a result had been able to work her culinary magic to produce some meals that were actually worth eating. Wink sat on the bar, nibbling on nuts. For the first few days, they’d left him aboard the Wind Breaker to keep watch, but with the ship visible from the window, it was just as easy to keep an eye on it themselves and let Wink keep them company.
Mack wiped a tear from his eye. “Never could figure out why folks think a rusty tool makes that sort of thing worse. It’s the pluckin’ that’s the painful bit.”
Butch shook her head and took the bottle away.
“Yeah… I reckon I hit it a bit hard… I can always tell when it’s time to quit when I start talkin’ like Coop.” He took a bite of the meal Butch had prepared. “You ever get to thinkin’ if there’d been more nights like this, we’d still be hitched?”
Wink’s ears twitched. Someone came, he tapped.
Mack set down his fork. “It’s just as well. I reckon I wouldn’t’ve liked the answer regardless.”
Wink scampered to the wall and up into the darkened rafters. Butch slid a boning knife from her apron.
“You know…” came a creaky voice from outside. “It is terribly inconvenient that you’ve all split up. I am after all of you, after all…”
Mack gritted his teeth. “And here I was thinkin’ you were good at your job. Announcin’ yourself rather than takin’ a shot at us.”
“We’re in a surface city. And I’m what you fine folks would call a ‘fugger.’ The first shot starts the clock ticking. Then some angry people come along and try to kill me. Besides, I’ve already done unspeakable things to your ship. And I have a terrible curiosity. It is one of my flaws.”
“You ain’t done a thing to the ship.”
“You’re sure? I’ve had all the time in the world. You’ve left it entirely unprotected and unsupervised. Tut, tut. And I thought the ship meant something to you.”
“The ship’s a ship. Only as good as its crew. And I know how to keep an eye on it even when I ain’t on it.”
“Heartwarming… Captain, I am rather parched. If I step inside, can I trust you and your lovely ex-wife to be hospitable?”
“We’re as trustworthy as you.”
“I’m afraid I’ll need better assurance than that. I am not the most trustworthy.” Fritz produced a creaky laugh. “I’ll tell you what. Look to the window.”
Mack shifted his eyes. The shutters slowly opened. Mack raised his pistol. First one hand appeared, then the other.
“There. Hands empty. Why don’t you do the same?”
“Because you’re the one hired to kill me. That’s the sort of history that’s hard to get past.”
“Please? Good conversation is so hard to come by. Consider it an opportunity to talk me out of it.”
“Nothin’ doin’.”
Fritz sighed. “We’ll put it another way, then. I’ve got six pistols. Six rounds per pistol. That’s thirty-six shots before I’ll need to reload. I’ve never claimed to be a terribly accurate assassin. Not one of my five skills. But I am quite certain I could spill an awful lot of blood in this town before I had to make myself scarce.”
“We’re your target.”
“I can always come for you. You gad about in the flashiest ship in all of Rim. But you were the one who decided to hide among a city of innocent bystanders.”
“This here’s Lock. Ain’t no one here innocent in the eyes of the fug.”
Another longer cackle followed. “Banter, banter, banter. I’m a decent judge of character. Skill five. I know two things about you with great certainty. You don’t kill casually, and you don’t stand idle while others do. I’ll give you to the count of five to holster that gun. Then off I go on my merry way to find a few dozen places to bury my bullets.”
“What’s to stop me from shooting you right now?”
“The same sturdy walls that you were trusting to keep you safe from sniper rifles. One… Two… Three…”
Mack holstered his weapon. “The gun’s away.”
“Hands high please.”
“Not on your life.”
“Very well. Without compromise we are naught but animals.”
In a blur of white, black, and purple, Fritz vaulted through the window. The assassin stood.
“There. Was that so difficult? A little civility before business?” Fritz took a sniff. “What is that delightful meal your trusty ship’s cook has prepared?”
“Hash,” Mack said. “You got business to settle before the bullets fly, get to it.”
“I read a great deal, and I remember it all. And until your theft from the warehouse and subsequent destruction of the dreadnought, there hadn’t been a single mention of you or your ship. Not in our papers. Not in yours. I have never seen someone go from meaningless to consistently newsworthy as quickly as you did.”
“Just lucky I guess.”
“Luck gets you in the paper once. For what you were in the paper for, twice, because most other crews would have only made the papers again upon their untimely demise at the hands of the fug authorities. To stay in the paper the way you have takes skill.”
“And?”
“And if you had the skill, then why wouldn’t you have been in the paper to begin with?”
“Us showin’ up in the paper is what started the troubles that ended up with me havin’ a chat with a heavily armed fugger who’s been paid to kill me.”
“I see… Notoriety does come with its dark side, particularly for those of us who make our living dancing through society’s shades of gray.”
“You’re a killer for hire. That ain’t what I’d call a ‘shade of gray.’”
“It’s a very dark one, I’ll grant you, but I’m morally superior to, for example, someone who kills for pure enjoyment. Now isn’t the time for discussing morality, though. We were on the issue of the comparative merits of notoriety. I, for one, would have considerably more difficulty doing my job if I were famous as well.” Fritz glanced down at the plate. “May I?”
“Help yourself,” Mack said.
Fritz moved slowly, so as to avoid any knee-jerk reactions from Mack and Butch. He took a fork and sampled some of the meal.
“Interesting. Rather more flavorful than the usual fare beneath the fug. I had heard your cook was a fine one.” Fritz placed the fork down and returned to a demonstrably nonthreatening position. “I must say, I was hoping to have a more hostile encounter with you. The papers list you as a vicious, unrepentant killer who would never miss the opportunity to take a life, but you’ve yet to make a move for your gun.”
“I reckon the paper down there ain’t much concerned about castin’ me in the proper light.”
“Lamentably so. Ever since Alabaster, the entire timbre of social discourse has been skewed in the direction of the sensational. For someone who devotes so very much of my time and attention to the printed word, it is profoundly disappointing. But fortunately, I have been given this opportunity to set the record straight, at least for myself. If luck is with me, the rest of your crew will be equally willing
to chat before the unpleasantness has to begin.”
“If you’d’ve run into Coop, Gunner, or Lil first, you’d’ve had a bullet in you before you got through three words. Just so happens I had a bit too much liquid courage leadin’ up to this, or you’d’ve got the same from me.”
“Ah!” Fritz said. “And so, once again, the invaluable role alcohol plays as a social lubricant is illustrated, greasing the hinges of the door between assassin and target, the better to open it for conversation.”
“This how you usually do your killin’? Talkin’ folks’ ears off?”
“Again, I so seldom get the opportunity to talk to those I’ve read about. This is by no means my normal operating procedure. But here, I’ve been an absolute oaf as I have yet to have a word with your lovely cook.” Fritz glanced aside and offered a hand. “Madame, I am Fritz, pleased to meet you.”
Butch gave Fritz a withering stare and did not accept the invitation for a handshake. Her hands were otherwise occupied, one gripping her boning knife, the other gripping a cast iron frying pan.
“She ain’t much for talkin’. Never bothered to practice anything but her native tongue.”
“Is that so?” Fritz said. “I am, lamentably, monolingual. Back to you then, Captain.”
“This is gettin’ old, Fritz. I’d just as soon start shootin’.”
“You are welcome to draw your weapon anytime you wish. Weigh that option carefully, however. While I lack the precision marksmanship of your Gunner, by virtue of my occupation I am exceptionally swift on the draw. Another of my five skills.”
Mack remained motionless but kept Fritz in a measuring gaze.
“Based upon my readings, the element that facilitated your shift from beneath notice to utterly noteworthy was Nita’s arrival. What precisely did her addition add to the crew that caused it to combust into the astounding fireworks display it has become?”
“Same thing that always makes things take to flame. She lit a match under us. Forced our hand.”
“Do you regret her arrival then?”
“I did. For about a minute.”
“And then?”
“Then I saw what she made me learn about my own crew. I knew they were the best I ever had. Never knew they were the best there ever was. The things we did because of her and on her behalf showed me the folks under my command could move mountains. And half the time it’s because I led the way. The other half, it’s because I got out of their way. Damn fine crew. Destined for better things than an old salt like me could ever bring ’em to.”
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