Dark Sky (Keiko)

by Mike Brooks

  +No, no problem. No problem. I will see you soon, Mr Drift.+

  The connection cut off. Drift looked at the comm unit thoughtfully. ‘Did he sound entirely happy, to you?’

  ‘Probably just tired,’ Apirana offered.

  ‘Si,’ Drift sighed, ‘I just wonder … oh, never mind.’

  ‘Like he might not like all the demands his grandfather’s putting on him?’ Jenna offered, careful to stick to the language they’d been using so far.

  ‘Hmm,’ Drift nodded thoughtfully, then snorted. ‘Well, we’re not here to fix anyone’s family issues. Let’s go and give Mr Shirokov his present, see if he’s got a message he wants us to take back, and get off this rock.’

  SHIROKOV

  LEVEL FIVE WAS hardly an improvement on Level One, where they’d begun, but at least it wasn’t noticeably worse. What Drift was less impressed by was the fact that after paying a fare for a shuttle tram to the transit elevators, he’d then found that they needed to pay a further fare to use the elevators, and then yet another to get a shuttle tram to the district where Cherdak was. He’d gritted his teeth and tried to tell himself that they were small expenses in the scheme of making 100,000 stars from Sergei Orlov, but he couldn’t help counting up the costs.

  They’d ended up in an area Jia identified as lodging for off-worlders, which might have been why there seemed a high percentage of bars, gambling houses and the like. The higher-budget ones advertised themselves with flashing holo displays while the cheap settled for glowing neon, some with signs in the windows saying ‘ENGLISH SPOKEN’, or the equivalent in Spanish, Swahili, Arabic and so on, which Drift viewed would be unlikely to be necessary elsewhere in Uragan City. This was not, after all, a highly cosmopolitan metropolis like New Samara; this was a Red Star mining town, and an almost exclusively Russian-rooted one at that.

  Cherdak was at least easy to find, as its name was written over the door in Cyrillic, Western and Mandarin alphabets. Drift gave it a quick once-over from the outside and decided he approved of it as a meeting place; not too flashy, insofar as that was possible down here, but also not completely down at heel. It was an unremarkable bar, which meant they wouldn’t be that remarkable going into it.

  Well, except Apirana. He looked back at the huge Maori, who had raised the hood on his top as per usual. While he liked Apirana and valued his presence immensely, Drift couldn’t help wishing that he didn’t stick out quite so much.

  Might as well wish for an entire engine refit while I’m at it, that’ll probably happen sooner.

  He pushed the swing door open and stepped inside, holding it for the other three and engaged in a quiet but meaningless conversation with Jia while doing so, the better to take a look around while trying to look natural. One or two people glanced up at them, but no one seemed overly watchful or suspicious. There were four groups in, probably ship crews judging by their clothes and general demeanour, with a few other individuals scattered around. The well-dressed Arab gentleman scowling at his pad might be a trader or broker, a middle-aged woman with a Japanese cast to her features could have been anything from a dealer in mining equipment to a diplomat on what had to be one of the most boring assignments available, the two Chinese men …

  ‘Triax,’ Jia whispered as they approached the bar.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Tattoos.’

  Drift frowned. He didn’t want to look again, but although he’d seen tattoos on both of them he hadn’t recognised anything which he knew to be a Triax gang sign. He sighed, and wondered again how much it would cost to get one of those recording chips with a playback function for his artificial eye. He had heard that sometimes caused the implant to run quite hot, however, and that just didn’t sound like a good trade-off.

  The landlady smiled at them as they approached, with more genuine warmth than Drift would have expected in this place. Still, four new customers were four new customers, and he supposed you probably got used to the dreariness of Uragan City after a while, especially if you’d never been anywhere else. He smiled back – she was actually rather pretty, and fairly young, with large blue eyes and hair so blonde it was almost white – and pulled out a credit chip, scanning the bottles lined up behind her.

  He ordered the drinks – two bottles of Cerveza del Diablo, his favourite beer, for Jenna and him, a vodka and Star for Jia and a plain Star Cola for Apirana – and glanced over towards the rear of the bar. Sure enough, sitting in the far corner by a window that let in very little light, there was a solitary man who hadn’t seemed to pay much attention when they’d walked in but was now studying them. Drift touched Jia lightly on the arm and began to wend his way between stools and other customers, while Jenna and Apirana chose a table at the opposite end, out of the way but able to watch the door.

  ‘Aleksandr Shirokov?’ Drift asked quietly when they’d approached to within a few feet. ‘My name is Ichabod Drift, captain of the Keiko, and this is my pilot, Jia Chang.’

  ‘Then please, sit,’ Shirokov replied, gesturing to empty chairs. Drift complied, studying the other man as he did so.

  Aleksandr Shirokov was probably in his mid-forties if you looked closely, but the lines on his face and the grey in his dark, thinning hair gave him the appearance of a man a decade older. He wore tired office clothes: black shoes with frayed laces, a dark blue suit from which the years had stripped whatever true lustre the material may have originally possessed and replaced it with a well-worn shine, and a mostly white shirt pulled open at the collar. The jacket was the cut favoured by the Red Star government, with an almost breastplate-like front panel buttoned at the right side of the chest. Drift had been expecting a miner, but this made far more sense: no miner would be likely to have access to the sorts of production quotas and shipping arrangements Orlov wanted.

  Drift produced a small box from one of the pouches on his belt and set it on the table. ‘Your grandfather asked me to pass this on to you. Did you have a message for me to take back?’

  Shirokov didn’t reply. Instead he stared at the box with an unreadable expression.

  ‘Mr Shirokov?’ Drift prompted, after a few seconds had elapsed with no reply forthcoming.

  ‘I have no message for my “grandfather”,’ Shirokov said, looking up and meeting Drift’s eyes, ‘but I have message for you, Captain.

  ‘Get me out of here.’

  Drift blinked, not welcoming the sensation of the metaphorical ground shifting beneath his feet. ‘Excuse me?’

  Shirokov reached out and flipped the box open to reveal a small silver oblong. ‘Do you know what this is?’

  Drift had already looked at Shirokov’s payment to make sure that he wasn’t going to be smuggling anything illegal into Uragan City, but made a show of inspecting it for the sake of politeness. ‘It appears to be a power cell.’

  ‘It is,’ Shirokov nodded. He tapped his knuckles on his left leg, which was unyielding. ‘I lost this leg at mine face when I was thirty-two. Industrial accidents not uncommon here, although mine was worse than many. I could not afford prosthetic, even from Universal Access Movement; they can provide good basic items, but my nerve damage too bad. I could only work in office and had to move by wheeled chair. My reading and writing not good, but I seemed to have knack to learn when I needed to. Also learned English; half well, I feel.’

  ‘Your English is certainly better than my Russian,’ Drift acknowledged, wondering when Shirokov was going to get to the point.

  ‘I got lucky,’ the Russian continued, although his lips twisted. ‘Or so I thought. Wealthy businessman visit our office, shocked how government does not help its injured workers. Organise for me new leg: proper, powered, matched with nerve endings, perfect balance. I can walk again! He tell me: any problems, I can reach him.’

  ‘I think I can guess his name,’ Drift muttered.

  ‘I think you can too,’ Shirokov sighed. ‘After eight months, power supply fails. I cannot find manufacturer to replace, brand too specialist for Universal Access Movemen
t to supply. I contact businessman; he say, of course I can get you new one! I send someone to bring you replacement. This man come just before big storm. He tell me—’

  ‘I can guess what he told you, too,’ Drift sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Goddamn it, was it too much to ask for Orlov to have found someone willing to talk for money instead of this little entrapment scheme? But of course, if you wanted regular information you needed your mole to have a regular need for whatever you were paying him. He thought for a moment about what he’d do to ensure his mechanical eye kept functioning.

  Yeah, quite a lot.

  ‘So you want out?’ he asked, gloomily.

  ‘Da,’ Shirokov said firmly, a tone of urgency entering his voice for the first time as he dropped it lower. ‘Here is my deal to you: you get me and my Pavel off-world and I give you information you need. This planet took my leg and I am sick of living in this svalka, sick of waiting for someone to realise I pass information for last ten years! Maybe I can find how to get new power supplies myself, maybe I just learn to do without one leg again. But I want to leave. I want to live.’

  ‘And if I don’t get you off-world?’ Drift asked wearily. Shirokov sat back, arms folded.

  ‘Then you fly back to New Samara and tell Mr Orlov you could not do his job.’

  For a moment, just a moment, Drift was tempted to do just that. Or, hell, just leave the system entirely; pack up and head off, forget about Uragan and New Samara and Sergei Orlov. Kelsier had left other stashes of money around the galaxy, after all.

  But … the hundred grand from Orlov was a payoff not to be sniffed at, and one of his reasons for taking this job was to prove to his crew that they still wanted to be a crew at all. Cutting and running from something as easy as this would not reflect well on his leadership credentials, or their chances of making a living from following him.

  Besides, Orlov might not bother coming after them, since it wasn’t like they’d taken anything belonging to him yet apart from the power supply sitting on the table in front of them, but what if he decided they’d found a higher bidder elsewhere and sold Shirokov’s information on? That would be a slight he could not overlook, regardless of whether he had any genuine concerns about their ability to cause chaos when provoked. And there was also their reputation with the rest of the galaxy to consider. Ichabod Drift, abandoning a simple fetch-and-carry information run because it got too hard? All Orlov would have to do would be to circulate that rumour and their employability would take a terminal nosedive.

  ‘And Pavel,’ he said, trying to buy some time to think, ‘he would be … your son?’

  ‘My husband,’ Shirokov replied. Drift nodded; at least a second adult would be easier to move than a child … Why in God’s name am I even considering this?

  ‘You understand that this is a slightly different situation to the one we were anticipating?’ he asked, amazing even himself with his understatement.

  ‘Of course,’ Shirokov nodded. ‘You may wish to get used to this, if you keep dealing with Mr Orlov.’

  ‘Right, thanks for that,’ Drift muttered. ‘Can you just up and leave when you like?’

  ‘Nyet,’ the other man sighed, shaking his head. ‘We will need emigration papers, and these the governor does not often grant. Who would stay, otherwise?’

  ‘Who indeed?’ Drift paused, then realised to his horror that Shirokov expected him to be able to do something about this. ‘Wait … what sort of clout do you think we have, exactly?!’

  Shirokov shrugged. ‘I do not know. A lot, I hope.’

  ‘Great.’ Drift looked at Jia, then back at Shirokov. ‘I’m gonna need to discuss this with my crew, so if you’ll excuse us …’

  ‘Please.’ Shirokov gestured to indicate they should leave the table if they wished. ‘We have until next storm arrives.’

  ‘Thanks for the reminder,’ Drift said, trying not to grit his teeth too hard, and pushed his stool back. He drained the rest of his beer with one long swig and turned to head for the bar, Jia at his elbow.

  ‘What we gonna do?’ the pilot hissed.

  ‘The way I see it, we don’t have many options,’ Drift muttered. ‘I mean, do you think Apirana would beat the information out of him?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘No, me neither,’ Drift agreed, ‘and I wouldn’t want to do that, anyway. That leaves us with—’

  ‘Rourke might.’

  Drift frowned. ‘You might be right. Maybe. Even so, I still wouldn’t like it. I think we’re going to have to do this the hard way and get both Shirokovs out of here.’ He smiled at the landlady and held up his now-empty bottle as she wandered over to them. ‘The same again please, krasotka.’

  ‘Why do you know how to say “pretty lady” in every language?’ Jia hissed as another beer found its way into Drift’s hand, courtesy of a slightly blushing landlady. Good to know he hadn’t lost his touch.

  ‘Because there are pretty ladies everywhere,’ he replied, taking a sip. ‘Okay. We obviously can’t get them proper emigration papers, so—’ He stopped, taking in Jia’s suddenly widening eyes. ‘What?’ He glanced around as much as he could without moving his head, trying to see if there were any mirrors or other reflective surfaces nearby, and lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Did someone just come in?’

  A hand landed on his shoulder and he was spun around before he could even move of his own accord. He found himself staring up, which didn’t happen often, into the face of a man he didn’t know. The newcomer was pale, with a slightly overlarge nose and hair an unremarkable shade of brown that fell shaggily to his jawline, and an artificial eye much like Drift’s own.

  He wasn’t alone. Drift registered three others, all shorter, two men and a woman. Then someone else sidled into view, hair as black as a New Samaran night and his face weathered and tanned by actual atmospheric exposure. He was wearing a red-and-white neckerchief, a matt black armavest and heavy-duty trousers, the sort Kuai favoured with hundreds of pockets and reinforced knees. His mouth, under that stupid damn moustache, was twisting into a smug grin.

  ‘Olá, Ichabod,’ Ricardo Moutinho sneered. ‘Long time, no see.’

  PUBLIC RELATIONS

  ‘COULD YOU IMAGINE actually living in a place like this?’ Jenna asked in a low voice, looking around the bar. Apirana took a swig of his drink and followed her lead, trying to let his preconceptions go.

  The buildings down here had clearly been built to specification; this was going to be A Bar, in the same way as the block across the street had been constructed (or should that be excavated?) as A Hotel or similar accommodation. It was a strange contrast to other mining planets or moons he’d been to, where old tunnels had been sold on by the mining companies to development agencies, and then on further to whoever could pay. On Uragan, the Red Star Confederate had come in and planned this entire subterranean city from scratch, then built it. It was ordered, functional and … well, more than a little soulless. Then again, if he was given a choice between living in the lower tunnels on somewhere like Carmella II or living in the lower levels of Uragan City, Apirana would take the pre-planned version every time.

  ‘I don’t think it’s that bad,’ he said honestly. ‘It’s clean, you got good air provision,’ he gestured at the large, functioning fans in the ceiling, ‘you got running water an’ sewage an’ that. Good lighting. Probably got grow galleries with sunbulbs in too, so you can at least get some fresh fruit an’ veg local.’

  ‘I’d miss the sky,’ Jenna said sadly, her face turned towards the darkened window which overlooked the street outside.

  ‘I would, too,’ Apirana nodded, ‘an’ I’m not saying it’d be ideal. But you can get used to it. Main thing is the people you share a place with. If you’ve got good people with you, you can put up with just about anything an’ keep going. If you’re surrounded by assholes, you won’t be happy anywhere.’

  ‘You think that?’ Jenna asked, turning to look at him. Apirana shrugged.

  ‘I know it. I
f that weren’t true, I’d still be in New Zealand.’

  Jenna winced, clearly uncomfortable with the reminder of his history: to be fair, it wasn’t a pleasant story. However, something else occurred to Apirana as he looked at her.

  ‘An’ I’m thinking that you might still be on Franklin Minor.’

  Jenna’s face didn’t move, but that in itself was an indication that he’d hit close to the mark; it wasn’t a lack of reaction so much as her expression freezing in place.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Apirana sighed. ‘Look, I ain’t meaning to pry, but you talking about how you’d miss the sky, an’ given how shook up you got with that business in the asteroid – an’ don’t get me wrong, you had every right to be shook up, that was some nasty shit an’ I don’t just say that cos I got shot – I’m just thinking, it sounds like you should’ve been happier on Franklin Minor. Got a breathable atmosphere, plants, animals, your family must’ve had some money, you went to university …’ He tailed off and swirled his drink around in his glass, looking down at it to avoid pressurising her with his gaze. ‘It sounds like a good place to be. But I know it don’t always work out that way. Just seems to me more likely that it’s people what meant you ended up with us, not that you had some sorta wanderlust.’

  Now he did look up. Jenna was staring at her own drink, lips pressed tightly together.

  ‘We don’t have to talk about our pasts.’

  ‘Not trying to make you,’ Apirana said gently. ‘I’m just speculating. Could be wrong, could be right. But sometimes having a secret can be draining. Sometimes people wanna talk about something an’ don’t know where to start. Sometimes it’s easier if someone else’s done some of the groundwork for you, if you know what I mean. Told you before, I ain’t in no position to judge anyone for what they’ve done or didn’t do, because odds are I did worse.’

  ‘Okay, just to get this straight, I didn’t do anything wrong,’ Jenna snapped, ‘so you can stop that line of speculation.’