Dark Sky (Keiko)

by Mike Brooks

  ‘You didn’t do anything wrong?’

  ‘No!’

  Apirana couldn’t prevent a slight smile touching his lips. ‘So you just turned up on our ship with all that slicing knowledge which had been purely theoretical beforehand, then?’

  ‘Uh … that’s …’

  ‘An’ it’s not like you told me an’ the Captain about how you’d got the stuff to make your EMP,’ he continued, winking at her. ‘Y’know, when you talked about how you’d been to a well-equipped university an’ you were good at getting around security systems?’

  Jenna glared at him, but she had the decency to look slightly ashamed. ‘There was a context.’

  Apirana couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Like I said, I ain’t judging. You’re whānau o’mine, an’ I trust you. You say there was a good reason, I ain’t gonna call you a liar. Probably a hell of a lot more sensible decision than I was making when I was your age.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Jenna replied, and he was relieved to see that she was smiling slightly, too. ‘A…. does it bother you that you’re still employed just as …’ She trailed off, as though looking for the right word.

  ‘A thug?’ Apirana suggested. She winced again, and he placed his hand briefly over hers to show he wasn’t offended. ‘Hey, don’t worry. It is what it is. An’ no, it don’t bother me, for two reasons. One, cos that’s not the case; the Captain don’t just view me as muscle with no brains, he’ll listen if I talk to him an’ he won’t ignore something I say just cos it’s me what said it. Second, he asked me. Didn’t trick me, didn’t pretend to be my friend an’ manipulate me, then tell me I owed him for favours. Came up to me in that bar on Farport an’ asked me if I wanted in on his crew, made no secret that I’d be expected to look threatening when needed and throw down if it came to it.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m good at both, but it ain’t no different to you an’ slicing. It’s something we do, not something we are. I can bring the thug out when he’s needed, an’ the rest of the time I’m just Apirana.’

  ‘Well, good,’ Jenna smiled. ‘I prefer Apirana.’

  To his astonishment, Apirana felt his stomach flutter. He coughed to cover his momentary confusion. ‘Well, yeah. Most people do.’ What the hell? Where had that come from all of a sudden? Okay, Jenna was a pretty girl, and intelligent, and he enjoyed talking to her, and it was true enough that his life hadn’t exactly been full of pretty, intelligent, companionable girls telling him that they liked him, but …

  Ah, shit.

  ‘A.?’ Jenna was frowning, and now she placed her hand onto his. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I … yeah, I …’ Apirana looked around for a distraction and saw an all-too-unwelcome one filing in through the bar’s main door. ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘What’s up?’ Jenna asked, apprehension colouring her voice as she presumably followed his gaze. ‘Who’re they?’

  ‘Ricardo fuckin’ Moutinho an’ whatever uku he has working for him right now,’ Apirana growled. ‘Ain’t seen him since that mess on New Shinjuku, where one of his goons stabbed me up.’ He could feel his pulse quickening as the memory of hot, silver pain flashed across his right shoulder. Drift was at the bar talking urgently to Jia, and Moutinho’s crew had clearly spotted him. They made a beeline for the Captain, Moutinho already smirking smugly. Apirana stood up, hands clenching into fists.

  ‘A….’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he told Jenna without looking at her. ‘Just hold that thought, yeah? Looks like we might need the thug.’

  When he’d been growing up as a young teen in Rotorua, Apirana had been a massive fan of the holo-show Boomer Izaak about a rough, tough sheriff on a planet he could no longer recall the name of. The actor who’d portrayed Boomer had given him a specific walk when it was time in the episode for heads to be cracked and fists to fly; it wasn’t fast but it had an unstoppable aura, with a rolling of the shoulders to emphasise his size and build. Apirana had practised it back and forth across his parents’ living room, at least when his father hadn’t been around to shout at him. In the years that followed he’d adopted it for real, when he’d been trying to exude intimidation to keep the Mongrel Mob’s enemies in line. These days, he fell into it as automatically as holding his breath before going underwater.

  Apirana spent a lot of time trying to minimise his size by hanging back or stooping a little, partly to avoid making people uncomfortable where possible and partly because he got enough stares as it was. Now, however, he threw his head up and his chest out, sucking in air through his nose and setting his face into a hard stare. It was a physiological change as much as anything else; he only moved like this when he was ready to throw punches, and wanted to advertise that fact.

  And as much as he liked to pretend otherwise, every once in a while it felt good not to be tiptoeing.

  The biggest man in Moutinho’s crew had grabbed Drift and spun him around. Moutinho himself was just sneering something when one of the others – a pasty-faced male youth with ‘tribal’ tattoos on his skinny arms which were, in Apirana’s opinion, shit – caught sight of Apirana bearing down on them. The youth panicked and turned, pulling a knife and drew back his arm to strike.

  That was his first mistake. Apirana didn’t give him a chance to make a second.

  He lurched out of the Boomer walk into a quick two-step run-up which terminated in a lunging kick that drove the sole of his right boot into the kid’s breastbone. Apirana had well over 300 pounds of momentum to play with and nearly three decades of fighting behind him, on streets, in bars and in prisons. He knew how to kick.

  The kid might have weighed half what he did, and all of that weight went flying back into the bar with the sort of sickening, dull thud that only comes when a skull meets an unyielding surface. He slumped down and Apirana instantly dismissed him. Even if he got back up, he wouldn’t be in a position to menace so much as a kitten for a couple of hours.

  Of course, he hadn’t meant to start a fight, but the kid’s colleagues were unlikely to stand off now. A blur of motion to his immediate left was the only warning that the guy in a turban had swung a punch. Fortunately Apirana had been expecting it, and his greater height allowed him to easily trap the swing beneath his right arm. From there it was a moment’s work to grab the back of the other man’s skull and pull him into a headbutt – technically against tapu, but Apirana had never really bought into that spiritual shit – then pull him down face first into a rising knee. Two down.

  A smashing sound dragged Apirana’s attention sideways, but it was only Drift. The Captain had taken advantage of the distraction to knock the end off his beer bottle and now held the jagged remnants to the throat of the big man who’d grabbed him, his other hand tangled in the crewman’s hair and pulling his head back. Apirana looked between Moutinho, whose face was a picture of shock, and the wiry pā kehā woman with a scar down her cheek who’d just picked up a stool by one leg.

  ‘Now,’ Apirana said to her levelly, holding up one fist for emphasis, ‘you don’t look that dumb. How about you three,’ here he nodded towards Moutinho and the big man, whose eyes were somewhat wild as the broken glass pricked his throat, ‘take your friends outta here before this gets really unpleasant, mā rama?’

  The woman looked to Moutinho for guidance. To Apirana’s relief, the captain of the Jacare nodded at her before bending down to scoop up the kid with the tattoos; none too gently, but that was none of Apirana’s concern. For her part, the woman dropped the stool she’d picked up and moved forwards warily to help support her crewmate in the turban back to his feet, on which he was rather unsteady.

  Moutinho looked at Drift, the swagger completely absent from his manner now, although there was more than a little resentment burning away in his eyes. ‘What about Dugan?’

  ‘Your friend here?’ Drift replied, nodding towards the man he was holding prisoner. ‘How about the rest of you walk out that door, and then I’ll let him go.’

  ‘And if we don’t?’ the woman spat. Apirana winced internally and readied hi
mself to step in. Shit, do not try to call his bluff …

  ‘Just get out the fucking door, Lena!’ the man called Dugan wailed, clearly reluctant to be the subject of this confrontation.

  ‘I’ll remember this,’ Moutinho snarled at Drift, but he was backing away.

  ‘See that you do.’ Drift’s face was thunderous. ‘Maybe you’ll think twice about trying to throw your weight around when other people are just trying to have a quiet drink.’

  Moutinho scowled, but chose to drag his groaning burden towards the door instead of answer. Lena and the man in the turban followed, the latter still moving like someone who’d overindulged in the bar’s wares. The door banged shut behind them, although Apirana could see them waiting on the other side of the darkened glass.

  ‘So, your name’s Dugan, right?’ Drift said to the man he had at bottle-point.

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘Listen, there’s nothing personal here,’ Drift said seriously. ‘I’m just going to give you some advice. First of all, stop flying with that man. Second, if you don’t take that advice, find out who it is he wants you to intimidate before you start doing it. You’ll live longer.’ He pulled the broken bottle away and shoved Dugan hard in the back in one motion, sending the larger man a few lurching steps across the floor. Apirana stood back to give him room, but Dugan didn’t seem inclined to linger. He was through the bar’s door a second later, and Apirana breathed a sigh of relief as the shapes of Moutinho and his crew turned away instead of coming back for another go.

  ‘Cristo!’ Drift threw his hands up as soon as the door had banged shut for a second time. ‘Why’d you have to start a fight, A.?’

  Apirana fought down a brief impulse to slap Drift, but he knew where that would end: Drift had made very clear before that if Apirana ever laid a hand on him again then he would find himself out of a job. Still, he didn’t keep the bass out of his voice. ‘He pulled a fuckin’ knife on me, bro! What was I supposed t’do?!’

  ‘He did?’ Drift’s eyebrows rose. ‘Ah. Didn’t see that.’

  ‘Da!’ To Apirana’s surprise, the landlady was now holding a length of metal which might have been a decapitated broom handle. ‘I saw it!’

  Drift turned to her with an apologetic expression on his face. ‘Madam, I am so, so sorry—’

  ‘Hssht!’ She held her hand up. ‘They been in here too many times, last few months. I don’t like them. Bad people, rude. Not polite like you.’ She lowered her voice, leaning forwards a little. ‘Sometimes come in here with others, too: local people, but troublemakers. Won’t be sorry if they stay away now.’ She picked up a comm handset. ‘You want I call politsiya?’

  ‘Ah, no. No, thank you,’ Drift assured her hastily, ‘we’re kind of pushed for time here, and we need to leave before the next storm. We’d rather avoid having to give statements, all that sort of thing. Uh, have you got anything I can clear this glass up with? I seem to have made a bit of a mess …’ He smiled and, as it usually seemed to, it did the trick. The landlady smiled back and waved him away.

  ‘See? Polite. Don’t bother yourself, I do it.’ Then, to Apirana’s surprise, she turned to him. ‘You.’

  He frowned. ‘Me?’

  ‘You ever need job, you come see me about security work, da?’

  Apirana smiled at her, on the basis that it seemed to be a good plan. ‘Sure thing, ma’am.’ He registered a presence at his elbow and turned to find Jenna standing there, and was suddenly acutely aware that he’d ended their previous conversation by beating down two men. Smooth, A.

  ‘You okay?’ she asked him, brushing one of her disobedient strands of hair back from her face as she looked up at him.

  He smiled. ‘Yeah, I—’

  ‘Good.’ She switched her attention to Drift. ‘We need to leave, now.’

  ‘How come no one ever asks if I’m okay?’ Drift asked, hurt.

  ‘Because no one cares,’ Jia said bluntly. The pilot had stayed well back from the fighting, which Apirana was thoroughly grateful for given what usually happened if her or her brother tried to get involved. ‘Shut up and listen to Jenna, she’s got her serious face on.’

  Jenna gave a brief nod of thanks to the other woman, then looked back at Drift. ‘We need to get out of here; I think someone’s called the cops already.’

  Drift frowned. ‘How do you …’ He tailed off as Jenna tapped her left forearm meaningfully, where her wrist console was hidden by the sleeve of her jumpsuit, then glared and lowered his voice to a hiss. ‘What did I say about not slicing into anything? Let alone security communications!’

  ‘That was before we got involved in a fight half an hour after we touched down,’ Jenna pointed out. ‘You want to tell me off, fine, but can we at least do it somewhere else?’

  Drift scowled at her. ‘Just for that, you’ve volunteered to solve our latest little problem.’ He threw a look over at the corner where he’d been speaking to the person Apirana assumed to have been Aleksandr Shirokov, but the table was empty. In fairness, several of the other drinkers had made a quick exit through the rear door during or in the immediate aftermath of their brief scuffle, but the sight seemed to infuriate Drift further. He waved his hands at them. ‘C’mon, back to the ship, now.’

  Apirana threw his hood up before they even stepped outside: it wouldn’t help much when it came to avoiding detection, but it was better than nothing. Thankfully there was no sign of Moutinho and his crew anywhere, and at least the inability of civilians to carry firearms meant they wouldn’t walk into some sort of ambush like the one that had claimed Micah’s life.

  ‘You get what we need?’ he asked Drift as they walked towards the shuttle tram stop as fast as they could without drawing attention.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah.’ Apirana had heard that tone of voice before, and it never boded well. It usually meant that something completely unexpected had gone wrong, which the Captain always seemed to take as more of a personal affront than expected complications like breakdowns, law enforcement officials and Jia’s piloting. ‘That’d be the “latest little problem” you mentioned, then?’

  ‘One of ’em.’ Drift pulled out the contact number they had for Shirokov and keyed it into his comm.

  ‘Shouldn’t you use a public—’ Jenna began.

  ‘Don’t care right now,’ Drift snapped. Clearly he was answered, because his next words made no sense otherwise. Not that they made much sense to Apirana anyway. ‘Pack your bags and wait for my call.’

  ‘Uh, why is he meant to be packing his bags?’ Jenna asked as Drift jabbed his comm earpiece off again. The Captain snorted humourlessly.

  ‘That is our latest little problem.’

  UNWANTED ENTANGLEMENTS

  ‘THAT’S THE BEST we can do?’ Drift asked with what Jenna felt was a wholly inappropriate dubiousness. She sighed, exasperated, and shoved the documents under his nose.

  ‘I told you: I’m a slicer, not a forger! The electronic component was no trouble, but the plasticwork …’ She shook her head in disgust. What sort of planet still relied on physical media? ‘It looks more or less okay, I think, but it’s probably the wrong thickness and maybe the wrong texture, probably the wrong weight, and the holographic watermark’s not going to stand up to any sort of real scrutiny.’

  She watched Drift pore over the thin plaspaper sheets she’d just managed to coax out of the Jonah’s on-board printer. You were never going to get everything handled digitally, of course, which was why they still even bothered to carry such an archaic piece of equipment. Some people simply wouldn’t take anything but a person’s signature on a physical contract, or at least expected it as part of a transaction; a sort of ceremonial accompaniment to a genescan, fingerprint or what-have-you. However, to find an entire planet where the government actually used it as standard …

  Well, in a way she supposed it was fiendishly clever. It was so outdated that no one would even consider needing to be prepared to forge something like this unless they already knew abou
t it.

  ‘Well, we’ve got no real option,’ Drift concluded. He ran his finger down one of the pages, then rubbed it gently between thumb and forefinger and held it up to the light. The flag of the governing conglomerate rippled in the top-right corner, a holo fluttering in a non-existent breeze.

  ‘Except turning around and heading back to Orlov,’ Rourke suggested from the cockpit doorway. ‘We could tell him his mole refused to cooperate, explain Shirokov’s demands.’

  ‘I don’t think that will help anyone,’ Drift replied pensively, ‘least of all us. Orlov won’t pay us, at the very least, and we’d be lucky if he didn’t spread it around that we couldn’t handle a simple information transfer. He doesn’t get to make his killing in the stocks, and Shirokov is still stuck here. No, if we get the mole off-world and he gives us the data then he gets what he wants, Orlov gets what he wants and by extension, we get what we want.’

  ‘Orlov gets what he wants until he next wants a jump on the ore market, you mean,’ Rourke pointed out, folding her arms. ‘How do you suppose he’ll react when he finds out we’ve taken his meal ticket away from him?’

  ‘Nothing to do with us if Shirokov somehow bought his way off-world,’ Drift shrugged. ‘We’ll be long gone from New Samara by that time anyway, even if we linger for a few days so our disappearance isn’t suspiciously quick.’

  ‘Except that Orlov is bound to have enough influence to access the shipping records here,’ Rourke said, her tone taking on a slight edge of exasperation, ‘and they’ll record his emigration on the Jonah.’

  Jenna raised a finger, feeling for an incongruous moment as though she were back on Franklin Minor watching her parents bickering over some small grievance. They’d never really fallen out, but the other person’s idiosyncrasies had clearly started to grate over time. ‘Uh, I can sort that. The Shirokovs might be recorded as leaving on the Jonah, but I can alter that as soon as we’re clear from the docking bay.’

  ‘Which, incidentally, cannot come quickly enough,’ Rourke muttered, casting a dark glare over at the shape of the Pouco Jacare. She shook her head, a disapproving twist to her lips. ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that Apirana actually knocked some sense into anyone’s heads?’