by Gem Jackson
He stalked back into the office.
Fenton was catching on quickly. He definitely had a brain. He didn’t say much, or react much, or do anything to indicate he had any kind of vibrant inner life at all. However, it seemed to Anton that he was taking on board what he was being told and right now, that was the main thing.
“So, you’re the new alpha dog, the big boss man, the mighty fucker with the big chair. Can you handle this?” asked Anton.
“I can handle it,” said Fenton. He looked like he could. He didn’t appear to be cowed or intimidated by the events of the past hour. Anton liked that. “So,” continued Fenton, “It’s always been like this? I mean, you’ve always put people in charge?”
“Well,” Anton wrestled with how to express it, “You might not remember this, but in the bad old days there were a fair few gangs about. I whittled them down. Now there’s us and the Kurla Six. Most of the operations that you’ve just inherited are based on what I put in place a while back. That’s why I still take a share. It’s why I’ll carry on turning up every once in a while to make sure things are ticking over.”
“All right, but there’s one thing I don’t get. Why top Syke now? We’re properly on top of the Kurla Six thanks to him. We could have the entire place to ourselves. Why fuck it up?”
“Fenton, my boy, you’re looking at things too narrowly.” Anton smiled and looked at his watch. They had a little time. He’d have to bed the boy in properly on the return trip, but he should know enough now not to screw things up too badly in the next few weeks. “You’re assuming that I’m only working with you lot on the Scotch Way. Right?”
“You’re working with the Six?” Fenton’s eyes narrowed. He tensed up.
“I’ll let you into a secret. I work with everyone. I own Ceres. It’s mine. It was always mine, it will always be mine. It exists at my whim.” Without moving an inch, through tone and expression, Anton rounded on Fenton. He was a shark explaining the intricacies of the food chain to a salmon. “I work with you. I work with the Kurla Six. I work with the Cerelean security service and the station commander up on Junction. I hold the strings that keep this place in balance.
“Tell me,” continued Anton, “who makes up the majority of gang members here on the Scotch Way, boys or girls?”
“Boys. Men, I mean,” said Fenton.
“No, you were right to say boys. Your soldiers are overwhelmingly young and male. What about the Kurla Six? Mostly boys or girls?”
“Boys mostly. A few girls, but not many.”
“Exactly. Gangs are made up of angry young boys who become angry young men. It’s one of the universal constants. There will always be angry young men. It’s biological. So consider, if you wipe out the Kurla Six, what then? The young, angry Indian men will not stop being young and angry. If the Kurla Six wipe you out, it’s the same. The young, angry Scots will not go away. So where do they direct their energies? Who knows? It becomes unpredictable. It becomes difficult to manage. It becomes chaotic. As it is, you know the Kurlas, the Kurlas know you. There’s an equilibrium at play. Sure, it ebbs and flows now and again, but for the most part it’s business as usual. Do you understand?”
“I think so. I think you’re saying that we should carry on hitting the Kurlas, but we shouldn’t hit them hard enough that they don’t get back up again.”
“You’ve got it,” Anton beamed, “you’re my man. I can tell. But here it is. We can talk more when I come back in a few weeks. I need to leave, but before I go, I need you to do something for me.”
“This is what it’s all about.”
“Aye,” said Anton, “this is what it’s all about. I’m here with two friends. You know them.” Fenton nodded. “I want them killed. Taken. Maimed. I want them fucked up. Whatever it takes so they don’t leave Ceres. Leave the consequences to me.”
“Fine. I can do that. Why not just do it yourself though?”
“It’s a fair question.” Anton considered how to put it. “I’ll be with them, probably, when it goes down. We’ll try to get back to The Aggressive, that’s the big warship we arrived on. I need The Aggressive to let me back on and if I whack them, well, it’s too risky. They could get a message back, it might not work and they could stop me boarding. No, I need to be above suspicion. I need to be on that ship when it leaves.”
“But they shouldn’t be on the ship. They should be dead. Or taken. Or maimed. They should be fucked up. Yeah. I can do that.”
“Bingo.”
Chapter 13 – Leon
The pirates made themselves at home on the Jackdaw’s Straw. Within hours Leon went from being comfortably numb alongside Murray to feeling like a stranger in someone else's home. Thankfully, Ardbeg spent most of his time alone. He didn’t do much of the actual work and was happy to set the general direction and let the others sort out the details.
Despite everything else that was going on, Leon was grateful for this. He found Ardbeg a deeply intimidating person. It wasn’t just that he was so big, and Ardbeg was huge, it was that everything else about him was magnified too. He blazed life into whatever space he occupied, and in that shadow Leon appreciated just how small and insignificant he was. Early on, Ardbeg had tried to strike up a conversation with him. Aside from the fact that Leon barely understood a word that was said to him, he simply found it too difficult to look the big man in the eyes for more than a second or so. It was as if his body rebelled against being under that kind of scrutiny. It was only when Ardbeg turned his back or when Leon could watch him from afar, lounging in the cockpit, that he could get a good look at him. For a start, there wasn’t an ounce of fat on the man. He estimated that Ardbeg was in his forties, yet his body held that taught muscularity that young men develop in their late teens as they broaden and discover just how strong they can make themselves. His limbs were long and toned, with just a little hair bristling along his forearms. And then there were his hands. They were paradoxical; like delicate, manicured shovels. Leon could imagine those hands grasping his shoulders firmly.
“Starflight.” Leon turned, brought suddenly back to reality. “You’re staring again. If you like, I can see if Ardbeg would be interested? You’re a bit wet for his usual tastes, but I guess he is broad-minded that way.” It was Sleet, Ardbeg’s de facto second in command. It was Sleet who had acted as translator for Ardbeg when the pirates had first taken the ship. It was Sleet who made sure everyone did as they were supposed to.
She was wrong about Ardbeg. He wasn’t attracted to him, at least not that way anyhow. He was fascinating in a larger-than-life kind of way, but he wasn’t attractive. He couldn’t say the same about Sleet, however. Her question left him flustered, as usual, but only because she was the one asking. The very question made Leon aware that she was thinking of him as a sexual being, and that made him cringe.
He stole a look at her before he answered. She was older than him, but not by much. Mid-twenties? Late at a push. She wore a grey t-shirt overlaid with a darker, pocketed sleeveless vest. He didn’t know what was kept in the many zipped pockets, but they all contained something. This left her arms mostly bare, her skin golden tawny-brown and lithe. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why, but the word ‘willowy’ sprang to mind when he looked at her. He didn’t really know what a ‘willow’ was. He chanced another face-to-face glance; dark lips and darker eyes rested on him. She raised her eyebrows as if reading his mind and cracked a wry smile. He startled at the realisation and looked away. The barrel of the rifle strapped to her back glinted and caught his attention as he did so. It was a reminder she wasn’t screwing around. She might decide to kill him at any moment.
After what felt like an eternity, he managed to splutter a response. “No, it’s all right I… I’m not, you know, like that? I just can’t help looking at him sometimes.”
“Yeah. It’s charisma. A lot of people get like that around him. He’s definitely something special, I’ll give him that. You know how long I’ve been knocking around with him? Two years. Two go
od goddamn years.” Leon winced at the blasphemy. She snorted. “Religious type? Titan? Yeah, I thought so. Picked it up in your accent. Not many of your lot around lately, is there? Well, I ain’t gonna judge you for it. Two years. We’ve done okay, I suppose. There are worse ways to get lost in the System, you can be damn sure of that.”
“How did you meet? I mean, you and Ardbeg?” asked Leon. He wasn’t sure why she was speaking to him. She’d never done more than bark an instruction to him over the last day or so. It wasn’t as if he’d spoken to many of the others either. There were four pirates altogether. Ardbeg and Sleet were in charge. Then there was Hail. She had been the one in the spacesuit with the cards outside the cockpit as they had been boarded. Hail was nice enough in person. Tall and heavy-set, she looked powerful and fairly intimidating unless Ardbeg was nearby, in which case she merely looked average sized. She was from Earth and spoke with a funny accent. Trying to make awkward conversation early on, Leon had guessed at German. It was French. Finally there was Torren, the Murpo; a Martian-European. And it showed. Even on Titan the word ‘Murpo’ was a byword for arrogance and bloody-minded patriotism. The Martian-Europeans claimed to be the first true System settlers. The Early inhabitants had been months away from Earth, not days like those on the Moon. It was a Murpo who invented the T-circuit. It was Murpos that pioneered drone-controlled excavation and habitation construction. In their own minds they were rugged, independent, and separated from the traditional nationalities and allegiance of Earth. To everyone else they were a little too self-involved for a System nation that didn’t add that much to the System anymore beyond trade and communication.
“How did we meet? I saved his ass on Ceres. It was a card game gone wrong. Or right, I suppose, given how it turned out. You never know kid, I might tell you the whole story sometime. Listen, I wanted to talk to you. Before we part ways, y’know?”
Leon dropped his chin onto his chest. The thought had been hanging over him for hours. Murdered or marooned? Those were the only likely outcomes of this debacle.
“We’ve been thinking, Ardbeg and me,” she continued. “We could use someone with your skill set. You’re a pilot, correct? A mathematician—trained and everything?” He nodded. “So presumably you know how to do the T-jump calculations and all that and check if a jump is set up properly and everything?”
“Yeah, I know that stuff. I can even do the math long hand if you need it.” They wanted him? This was an opportunity. It was a choice. It was illegal. He felt sick again.
“Y’see, we could use that. Even with the software to calculate the jumps we don’t really understand what we’re doing when we input the numbers. It’s slow. You could jump us in half the time we take now, maybe less. And you could spot an error in the software if it ever cropped up. It makes me shiver every time we hit that button. You hear things, y’know, about folks who just disappeared? One moment they’re here then they jump and end up on the other side of the galaxy. It’d be thousands of years before we even got their distress signals.”
“What about Murray? The other guy? Did he turn you down first?” he asked. She smiled and ran long fingers through her hair.
“Your APSA friend? He’d be lucky. For a start, he came at us armed. He wouldn’t roll over, not someone like that. Plus, even if he did, Ardbeg wouldn’t want him. He doesn’t like the military mind. But I figure you’re commercial. You’re young. You’re looking at getting out of this in one piece. That’s worth a shot. Anyway, you’ve got the choice if you want it. But if you want in, you gotta be all in. No going back.”
“What if I don’t want in?”
She shrugged. “Then I guess it is what it is.”
I don’t want to die. The thought flitted around Leon’s consciousness, knocking fruitlessly against the windowpane of reality like a small, determined, insect. The alternative thought, I’m going to die, was getting harder and harder to avoid. If he joined the pirates, he was signing a death warrant for himself at some near point in the future, either from someone in the crew itself, if they figured out who he was, or from one of the many, many, many pirate hunting vessels around the system. On top of this there was the sheer absurdity of the term ‘pirate crew’. There must be a better term to use, surely? Gang? Reavers? Criminals? Not that it mattered much. If he joined, he would probably be dead within a month. And that’s assuming Murray didn’t spill about his genuine job as an APSA pilot. That was worth an airlocking, surely?
But then if he didn’t join, that meant death too. Probably much sooner. Marooned or airlocked. Or maybe just a shot to the head?
Maybe Sleet might sleep with me beforehand?
Leon pushed that thought away. This was serious. He was getting horny in the most inappropriate situations these days.
“Starflight, get up here now!”
Leon didn’t know who shouted, but it came from the cockpit. He heaved himself to his feet and pushed the sinking feeling in his stomach further down. I don’t want to die.
“Starflight! Cockpit. Now.” It was Sleet. It sounded urgent. Suddenly everything was a little busier.
“Outta the way cretin,” Torren pushed past, bolting to the head of the ship. He looked worried. Leon chided him under his breath.
“What’s up?” asked Leon as he crept into the cockpit. Ardbeg and Sleet looked at home in the two pilot seats. Leon thought of the hours he and Murray had spent alone and in silence in those seats.
“Start jump prep. We need to go and we need to go now.” Sleet was harried.
“I had a jump prepped already, can we use that?”
“Oh sweet summer child,” Ardbeg smiled broadly and Leon shrank a little into himself. “We eradicated your calculations to annul the possibility of an unpropitious evacuation from this locality.”
“What…?”
Sleet translated, “We wiped your calculations so nobody could jump the ship by accident. We need you to plot another jump. There’s a fuck-off big cruiser out there that’s just appeared damn near on top of us.”
“What? It doesn’t matter anyway, the jump drive needs another few days to recharge. This ship has only got a small reactor for the fusion-drive.” Leon glanced at the screen. There it was, a single, substantial spacecraft, in all likelihood larger than the Aggressive. He studied the adjacent sensor panels and almost swore.
As a pilot, Leon’s knowledge and understanding of sensors and tactical control was limited to what he had covered in Executive Control Basics. Once again everything hinged on an appreciation of the vast distances between objects in space and, especially as one moved further from the Sun, how dark everything was. Cameras and normal visual queues were useless. In order to know who and what was around you, one of two methods could be employed. The first was to have passive detectors that picked up the myriad of energy signatures crashing about.
Most of these were fairly constant; light and other radiation from the sun and faraway stars and galaxies, radio signals and the occasional flashes of narrow beam data transmissions. Amongst all of that a well dialled algorithm might be able to pick out sunlight bouncing off a nearby craft, or its communications or the energy spike from an engine. This wasn’t the best way to know what was around you, but it had one important advantage—it didn’t light you up. Passive sensors didn’t much of a signal for anyone else to find.
The more effective way to know who or what was around you was through active detection; sending out energy and seeing if it bounced off anything back onto a detector. Typically, this would in the form of radio waves or lasers. Active systems were the most efficient method as you had far more control over where you were looking and how closely. The data returned would be far more thorough, and it was fast. The downside is that actively detecting what was nearby lit you up for everyone else to see. Weapon sensors were a notorious example of this. The accuracy needed over distance to quickly find, target and hit another vessel with a railgun, for instance, meant the laser targeting systems used had an easily recognisable signature.
As a compromise, most armed vessels used one or two active targeting arrays and slaved any additional weapon systems to them. A vessel with multiple targeting arrays was normally built with the expectation that it would have to use all of them, simultaneously, on many targets, without caring about being seen. It was a bold and very specific design choice.
“Good Lord, how many weapon arrays does one ship need?” He looked helplessly at Sleet, who merely shrugged. Was she lost for words?
“Can you jump us?” she asked.
“No. I said I can’t,” said Leon. “We’re still charging. There’s no time.”
They both looked at Ardbeg. He was resting his forehead pensively on his long, splayed fingers.
“I’m thinking.”
Leon wasn’t stupid. He might not be an experienced buccaneer of the stars, but he knew a lost cause when he saw one. They were outgunned, outclassed and would easily be outrun if they turned tail.
Sleet took the rifle from her back into her hands. She spoke to Leon whilst readying the weapon. “If I were you, Starflight, I’d find a corner somewhere. This might get messy.”
Leon looked from Sleet to Ardbeg again. He held the same pose as before, deep in thought. Only now he looked a little smaller than usual, less quiet strength than denial of the facts.
“Come on,” Sleet pushed Ardbeg’s shoulder, breaking his reverie. “We’ve probably got less than ten minutes.”
In the end they had considerably more than ten minutes. The new ship had the advantage and they knew it. They took their time, taking the Jackdaw’s Straw as efficiently as any well trained APSA crew.