Dark Sky (Keiko)

by Mike Brooks

  ‘All in all,’ Apirana said quietly after a few moments, ‘this has not been one of my better days.’

  Jenna said nothing. She wasn’t sure what to say.

  ‘Sorry for giving you a hard time about the circuitheads,’ he continued a moment later. ‘Didn’t mean to cause a fight. You helped me as much as they did, anyhow.’

  ‘A.,’ Jenna said carefully, after a pause, ‘have I … done something?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘You’ve been … weird. Towards me.’ She fiddled with her wrist console, theoretically studying the map but in reality it was so she had an excuse to talk to Apirana without looking at him. She didn’t even know why she’d started this conversation again, other than she had the worrying notion that they were going to be found by people harbouring bad intentions towards them and she wanted to get at least one thing straightened out first.

  There was a pause, slightly too long. ‘Have I?’

  ‘Yes, you have.’ She felt some heat creep into her voice. ‘And don’t play innocent either, I can tell that you know it.’

  There was a huff of breath from beside her, and a faint reverberation as something gently hit the dumpster. She looked around to see Apirana’s head tilted back, eyes open and staring upwards.

  ‘Didn’t mean to be.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, A.!’ She managed to keep her voice low with an effort. ‘I don’t really give a damn what you meant to do, but you’ve been making me feel worried and on edge since we set foot in this hole and I just want to know why!’

  He looked sideways at her, his face tight and his expression uneasy, so far as she could make it out in the dim light thrown up by her wrist console. ‘You sure this is the right time?’

  ‘This is the only time,’ she replied firmly. ‘I’m not running around this city with you any longer until I know what’s going on. I thought you were my friend.’ She tried to keep the last sentence from being overwhelmed by bitterness, but only partially succeeded.

  ‘Okay,’ Apirana muttered after a second, sounding about as subdued as she’d ever heard him. ‘Just remember I ain’t much good with words, right?’

  ‘That’s a lie to start with,’ Jenna retorted, ‘you are good with words. You remember how you came and talked to me about you, and your family, after we’d loaded that cargo from Kelsier’s ship? That was about the most open and honest anyone’s ever been with me. Just because you can’t spin bullshit around like the Captain doesn’t mean you’re not good with words, A.’ She turned towards him slightly, trying to get him to understand. How was it possible for one man to sometimes be so perceptive about what she was thinking but completely oblivious at others? ‘They just have to be your words. So tell me: what’s going on?’

  There was another pause.

  ‘Guess I just noticed something that’s been under my nose for a while,’ Apirana rumbled eventually. ‘I’ve seen a fair few crew come and go, an’ each of us, an’ pretty much everyone I’ve met since I were a kid for that matter, we’re all one sort of bastard or another. Maybe it’s what this life turns us into, maybe you’ve just gotta be that to stick at it for any length of time, I dunno.

  ‘But you’re different. You ain’t just good at what you do, an’ smart, an’ pretty, you’re nice. You’re a real good person, and I’d kinda forgotten what they were like.’

  Jenna almost started in surprise. That was the most compliments anyone had paid her for a long time, and Apirana had just tossed them out as though they were accepted facts.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, the others ain’t so bad,’ the big Maori continued, ‘but if we all got rich tomorrow an’ I could settle down, I’d probably wish ’em well an’ not think much more about ’em. But not you. I …’

  He broke off for a second, his voice thickening a little, and coughed awkwardly.

  ‘You said you thought I was your friend, an’ I am, an’ I always intend to be. But I want to be more than that too, if you’re willing, an’ I just realised that. I didn’t want you to just move on an’ leave one day, not without telling you how I felt, but here’s me, wrong side of forty an’ I’ve never even met someone I could say I … liked. Let alone figured out how to say it to ’em. So while I was trying to work out words for it all, I just tripped over myself and messed shit up.’

  Jenna sat very still and very quiet while she tried to process what she’d just heard. She knew that a response was probably called for – a carefully thought-out, honest and tactful response – but she was finding it hard to formulate one because most of her brain seemed to be off flying in circles somewhere else and all that remained was one small part loudly asking, Does this qualify as being ‘gobsmacked’?, which really wasn’t helpful. She blinked a few times, in case that helped.

  ‘I …’

  Footsteps. Footsteps coming into the alley behind them. She bit down almost gratefully on the barely formed sentence and held her breath.

  The footsteps slowed.

  Stopped.

  ‘You really shouldn’t have your console lit up if you’re trying to hide, you know.’

  The voice was low-pitched enough to be borderline between masculine and feminine, carried the accent of North America and, perhaps most tellingly, was devoid of much in the way of humour. Jenna’s momentary shock at being addressed by the unseen person evaporated into relief as she recognised the speaker and she scrambled to her feet, stepping out into what passed for the light in the alley.

  A silhouette stood between them and the street beyond: shorter than Jenna, with its shape lost in a flowing coat and a wide-brimmed hat, and with a familiar-looking rifle slung casually over one shoulder. Jenna could have hugged her, only that would have been weird and she wasn’t entirely certain she wouldn’t find herself with a dislocated shoulder from some sort of self-defence move.

  ‘You have no idea how glad I am to see you,’ she breathed, a relieved grin spreading of its own accord across her face.

  ‘Likewise,’ Tamara Rourke nodded. ‘Where’s Apirana?’

  ‘Here,’ the big Maori grunted, levering himself up with some effort. Jenna instinctively moved to help him then stopped herself in sudden fear of what that might be seen to imply, and by the time she’d sorted her brain out enough to decide that no, she really should be helping him, he’d managed to make it up to his good foot anyway. Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with me?

  ‘Moutinho told me you were on crutches,’ Rourke said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I— Hang on, Moutinho?’ Apirana looked about as shocked as Jenna felt.

  ‘Long story short, we’ve agreed not to be pains in each other’s asses until we’re off this dirtball,’ Rourke said perfunctorily. ‘Can you move?’

  ‘Long as you don’t go too quick,’ Apirana offered.

  ‘Good.’ The hat turned back towards Jenna. ‘I need you.’

  Jenna tried to look attentive, eager for a distraction that might give her time to think. ‘What for?’

  ‘Another long story short,’ and now there was the very faintest hint of a dry smile in Rourke’s voice, ‘we’ve just joined the revolution. And they need a slicer.’

  WAIFS AND STRAYS

  SHIT, I’VE BEEN shot.

  Drift experienced a moment of quiet panic, oddly isolated from what was going on around him. Even the noise of Muradov barking an order and a presumably thunderous hail of gunfire erupting from the transports and their disembarking politsiya seemed muffled and distant. Then his brain caught up with events and registered that although he was winded from the impact and fall and he was going to have a bastard of a bruise in a few hours, he could feel nothing to suggest that he was bleeding and all his arms and legs still seemed to work. His armavest had done its job.

  The realisation that he still had all his health to lose hit at about the same time as a fresh adrenaline rush. He scrabbled into what was probably a poor approximation of the knees-and-elbows crawl he’d seen in countless war holos, but which served well enough at
getting him towards the shelter of the transports without putting him in anyone’s line of fire. The thicket of boots he was heading for obligingly parted to let him through and he scrambled gratefully up into the back of the transport they revealed. Two hands hauled him in and he looked up into the faces of the Chang siblings, one on each side of him. Kuai immediately went back to fiddling with his dragon pendant and Jia looked about as stressed as he’d ever seen her.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said with some feeling, thumbing the safety of his rifle on and sitting up. ‘You two alright?’

  Jia’s face congealed into a thunderous scowl and he thought for a moment he was going to be on the receiving end of one of her vituperate bilingual rants. However, she simply turned away and did as creditable an impersonation of someone storming off as could be performed inside a somewhat cramped armoured vehicle. Drift stared, confused and not a little annoyed.

  ‘Me caga en la puta, I just got shot!’ he shouted after her, then turned to Kuai. ‘What the hell’s her problem?’

  The little mechanic shrugged. ‘She left her hat in the hotel.’

  Goddamn pilot hat. Drift lowered his voice. ‘We need to find some way for her to deal with things without that stupid “lucky hat” of hers.’

  Kuai shrugged again, managing to make the motion accusatory with the ease of a practised passive-aggressor. ‘I tried hiding it once, but you made me give it back.’

  ‘Well, yeah, because she …’ threw a tantrum and I needed her to fly us somewhere. He sighed. ‘Never mind.’ Sometimes being a freelance captain was a little like how he imagined parenting to be, although so far as he was aware it was generally frowned upon to fire a child.

  He became aware that the sound of gunfire from outside had ceased, and a moment later the vehicle began to rapidly fill with black-armoured shapes. One of them removed his helmet as soon as the doors were shut behind them, revealing the face of Chief Muradov. He gave Drift an appraising look. ‘Are you injured?’

  ‘I’m sore, but I’ve had worse,’ Drift informed him, then frowned as they lurched into motion again. ‘What about your wounded?’

  ‘They are in the other car,’ Muradov replied, gesturing about them. ‘We are trying to fit three squads plus civilians into two vehicles, so things are a little … cramped.’

  ‘I’d noticed,’ Drift muttered as the benches became occupied by politsiya backsides. On the upside, he was clapped on the shoulder in comradely fashion by the woman who ended up squeezing in on his left: clearly his efforts to stay in one piece by keeping as many armoured bodies as possible alive to help him had convinced people that he was a team player.

  ‘You said you’re pulling back to Level Four?’ he asked Muradov above the noise of the engine. The security chief nodded.

  ‘There have been no reports of rioting above Level Five. We can close off the lower half of the city until the unrest has run its course, so you should be safe.’

  Drift didn’t much like the idea of being sealed off from half of his crew, but did his best not to let it show on his face. ‘Could you relax your restriction on crews not being allowed to stay on their ships?’ he asked instead.

  Muradov pursed his lips. ‘I will consider it.’

  ‘We’ve got nowhere else to go,’ Drift pushed, ‘and I’d like to be somewhere the rest of my crew can—’

  ‘I said, I will consider it,’ the security chief stated with finality, and Drift subsided. The thing was, he was fairly certain that Muradov would consider it, which made it more difficult to dislike him for not giving an immediate answer. Drift liked being able to dislike authority figures; it made it easier to ignore his conscience when he inevitably broke their rules.

  +Kommandir!+

  Muradov looked up sharply as the driver activated the intercom, and he reached over to answer it. A quick exchange in Russian followed, and Drift looked to Kuai for a translation while belatedly fumbling with his pad to activate the translation function on his comm earpiece. He didn’t want to drain his pad’s charge too much while on the move, but it looked like he was going to be surrounded by Russian speakers for a while yet.

  ‘Civilians in the road,’ the Chinese mechanic murmured, just loud enough for Drift to hear. ‘The driver thinks they’re off-worlders, judging by the clothes.’

  Tamara? If anyone could track them down in a city with no comms and in the middle of a mass riot, it was his business partner. But what if Muradov decides it’s another trap? He took a breath to protest if the security chief gave any indication of ordering the gunners to open fire, but instead the Uragan swiped at a holoscreen to bring up an image of the road in front of them. There were two people visible, one larger and one smaller, both waving their arms desperately and growing larger by the moment as the car rumbled closer.

  ‘Captain,’ Muradov said, looking over his shoulder at Drift and gesturing at the screen, ‘do you know these two?’

  Drift got to his feet and picked his way as quickly as he could through the forest of boots and legs to stand next to Muradov. As soon as he got there his hope of seeing Apirana and either Rourke or Jenna evaporated into bitter disappointment. For a moment he considered denying all knowledge, but he’d already decided that lying to Muradov wasn’t something he wanted to try unless he absolutely had to.

  ‘They’re members of Ricardo Moutinho’s crew,’ he said reluctantly. ‘The man’s called Dugan; I don’t know the woman’s name.’ Although she was willing to go one-on-one with Apirana if needed, which makes her batshit crazy at the very least.

  Muradov seemed to consider that for a moment, then activated the comm again and gave the order to stop. The vehicle began to slow in response, to Drift’s surprise and mounting apprehension.

  ‘Chief,’ he said in alarm, ‘this could be another trap!’

  ‘Which is why everyone will have their guns ready,’ Muradov snapped. ‘Captain, I appreciate you and Captain Moutinho are not on the best terms, but I have the same duty to these people as I do to you and yours.’

  ‘And what if Moutinho was involved in the gunrunning?’ Drift demanded. ‘You said yourself he’s been here several times over the last few months.’

  ‘Well then,’ Muradov said quietly, ‘I will need to be having conversations with his crew, will I not?’ He turned away and began barking instructions to the politsiya officers, who readied their weapons. Drift watched uneasily as the hull-mounted camera tracked closer and closer to the frantically waving smugglers, then glided past them as the vehicle slowed to a halt. Someone threw open the back doors to reveal Dugan and the woman, whose expressions of relief were replaced by alarm as they realised they were facing a dozen gun barrels.

  ‘Get in, please,’ Muradov ordered from behind a small wall of politsiya.

  ‘But—’

  ‘That was not a request,’ the security chief snapped. His officers shuffled backwards a little to make room and the two off-worlders reluctantly clambered aboard into the increasingly crowded transport. The doors were pulled shut behind them as soon as all their limbs were inside the passenger bay and Muradov signalled another officer, who hammered on the driver’s door to set them in motion again. Drift picked his way back to Kuai, mainly so neither Dugan nor the woman ended up stealing his seat.

  ‘I am Security Chief Muradov,’ Muradov announced without preamble, ‘and Uragan City is currently in a state of martial law. You have both been identified as crew of the Jacare and are being placed in protective custody until the current state of emergency is ended. Your names?’

  ‘Dugan Karwoski,’ the big man replied, still eyeing the guns nervously.

  ‘Lena Goldberg,’ the woman added. ‘Identified by who, anyway?’

  Muradov jerked a thumb in Drift’s direction. ‘By the good Captain here.’

  The pair’s eyes tracked to Drift, seeing him for the first time, and widened almost simultaneously. Goldberg’s face hardened instantly. ‘Son of a—’

  ‘Captain Drift is also in protective custody,’ Muradov said o
ver her impending curse, ‘as are the members of his crew here. Where are the rest of yours?’

  ‘Hell if I know,’ Karwoski said, not without a hint of despair. ‘Captain was meeting someone, Lena and I headed out for a drink. Next thing we know there’s sirens everywhere, and everyone’s looking at us a bit strange, and our comms don’t work anymore. Then we heard gunfire, and then we saw your vehicles.’

  ‘Thought we’d flag you down and find out what was going on,’ Goldberg put in, a little sullenly, ‘not get taken for a ride.’

  ‘Who was Moutinho meeting?’ Muradov asked, deceptively quietly.

  ‘Some contact about a shipping contract,’ Goldberg replied, a little too quickly if Drift was any judge. ‘I don’t know the name.’

  ‘Where’re you taking us, anyway?’ Karwoski asked, changing the subject fairly blatantly.

  ‘The fourth level,’ Muradov replied after a second or two of studying their faces. He held up one hand to silence their protests, and both were at least smart enough not to try shouting over him. ‘Martial law is in effect on Level Five and the streets are not safe. Since you have no homes to go to, you are coming with us.’

  ‘And what about our crew?’ Goldberg shouted after him as the security chief turned to pick his way back to the tactical comm unit at the other end of the vehicle. Muradov stopped and looked back over his shoulder.

  ‘Hopefully, they are not doing anything stupid.’

  He turned away again immediately and so didn’t see the look that passed between the two, but Drift had been watching for it and knew guilt when he saw it. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that Moutinho had not only been bringing in the guns but had pinned it on the Keiko’s crew as a combination of petty revenge and a smokescreen. And now some sort of revolution had kicked off … but it had apparently taken these two unaware, and presumably Moutinho as well. Had they really not realised who they were selling to? Then again, Drift knew full well that asking too many questions could simply get potentially lucrative doors shut in your face. Sometimes you just took the job and did it.