by Mike Brooks
‘You still want to steal her onto your crew?’ Rourke asked him in Russian.
‘Go die in a fire, Tamara,’ he retorted without turning, then reached down to haul Achilles to his feet. ‘Stand up, you little prick.’
‘She hit me in the—’
‘Everyone saw. No one cares. Get up.’
Rourke took a couple of steps over to where Jenna was standing and glaring at the back of Moutinho’s head. ‘Nicely done with Achilles.’
‘Thanks,’ Jenna muttered. ‘I know you told me once that every guy’s on alert for a nutshot because it’s so obvious, but he had a helmet and an armavest on, so I thought—’
‘No, you did good,’ Rourke assured her. She leaned a little closer and lowered her voice. ‘I’d advise against staring down Moutinho again, though. It’s good to show him you’re no pushover, but he’s smart, vicious and vindictive, and proud to boot.’
‘You don’t seem to mind antagonising him,’ Jenna replied. Rourke smiled slightly.
‘He already hates me. Plus he knows I can kick his ass.’
The tram made a low shrieking sound as it rounded a bend on the tracks a little too fast, and Rourke had to grab a strap dangling from the ceiling for just such a purpose in order to avoid stumbling sideways. Moments later the tannoy crackled into life, feeding Jack’s voice back to them.
+Everyone might want to duck about now.+
Rourke glanced ahead and saw the Jacare crewman hunkering to the floor behind the driver’s control panel. A moment later a window shattered as a bullet passed through it, and there was a ringing sound as another was turned aside by the tram’s metal skin. They were approaching a street crossing on the way out of the depot and a couple of rebels who’d got ahead of them had apparently decided to try to stop the tram, or at least kill the occupants.
‘Down!’ she yelled, pulling Jenna down with her and rolling away from the glass doors as another window shattered, this one closer to them. Apirana hit the floor with a grunt of pain a moment later, but got tangled up with his crutches and couldn’t seem to get any purchase to get into cover. Rourke fought with the instinct to help him, unwilling to leave him there but knowing that she wouldn’t be able to drag his bulk across the floor …
A gun barked several times, a few yards away. She looked around to see Moutinho standing and firing through the window in front of him, then drop back down again into a sitting position with a satisfied smirk on his face. The shots from outside stopped, and as their carriage passed the crossing, Rourke saw a man and a woman on their backs and clearly in the early process of bleeding out.
‘You’re welcome,’ he grinned when he saw her looking in his direction. Rourke sighed and cautiously got back to her feet, although now they were away from the depot there appeared to be no further immediate threats.
‘Where are we actually going?’ she asked, helping Jenna up.
‘If Jack’s got any sense, which he does, we’ll be heading for the spaceport,’ Moutinho replied, checking the magazine on his weapon and grimacing at what he found. ‘There’s a terminal right inside it.’
‘How will he make sure we get there?’ Jenna asked dubiously. ‘Aren’t there preprogrammed routes, or something?’
‘Nah, the drivers know their routes and select the lines they need to go on,’ Moutinho said, pulling a fresh clip from his belt. ‘There’s controls in the cab to choose from the different line polarities when it reaches a junction.’
Rourke studied him, grudging admiration warring with distrust. ‘You studied this … in case you ever needed to steal a tram?’
‘Don’t sound so ridiculous now we’re on one, does it?’ Moutinho snorted, reloading his gun and getting to his feet. ‘C’mon Tamara, you know as well as I do that it’s best to research all possible ways of getting out of somewhere quickly, just in case the shit hits the fan. We’d come here a few times and took the tram more than once: all we had to do was stand behind the driver and watch what they did. Besides, Jack can drive or fly pretty much anything if he puts his mind to it.’
Rourke nodded slowly. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that Ricardo Moutinho was an intelligent and resourceful man whose crew would have been hired for specific reasons. ‘So, we get to the spaceport in a tram with bullet holes in it, then what?’
‘I’m thinking we see how many people are between us and the ships and how gullible they look, then bluff or shoot our way past them depending on that,’ Moutinho replied, scratching his stubbled cheek. He shot Jenna a brief, disapproving glare. ‘That’s if your girl there wants to give Achilles his gun back.’
‘Can he use it?’ Rourke asked dubiously, eyeing the skinny, pale youth standing further down the tram and looking glumly out at their surroundings.
‘Hell, what do you think he’s on the crew for, his looks?’ Moutinho guffawed. ‘Kid’s worse than an asthmatic grandma in a fist fight, but he’s the best damn shot this side of Alpha Centauri.’
‘Do you even know which side of Alpha Centauri we are?’ Rourke demanded.
‘Eh, like it matters,’ Moutinho shrugged. ‘I reckon it’s still true.’
Rourke exchanged glances with Jenna, who looked a little uneasy but passed the weapon over. Both of them knew that Jenna’s place on the Keiko’s crew was definitely not due to her proficiency with firearms, and if a fight was going to break out then it made sense for someone to be armed who would make a difference in their favour. All the same, since the earlier confrontation Rourke felt more than a little uneasy being the only member of her crew who was armed. She frowned as a thought struck her.
‘Hey, Ricardo. Who’s your slicer?’
‘Skanda was filling in, but he wasn’t exactly an expert,’ the Jacare’s captain replied. ‘What, you think I was keeping blondie there safe just because she’s pretty? I knew we might need her to get us out of that concrete coffin they’ve got our shuttles in.’
Rourke nodded, partially reassured. At least she probably didn’t have to worry about the Brazilian allowing Achilles to get any form of revenge on Jenna. Whether he’d show any restraint when it came to her or Apirana, however …
She pinched the bridge of her nose as her vision blurred slightly. Damn it. I went without sleep for three days once, minus twenty minutes here and there, and now I can’t stay awake for more than twenty-four hours? I really am getting old.
‘You okay?’ Apirana rumbled. The big man had dragged himself back onto a seat, but he looked spent. He could still probably grab Achilles and punch his face in, but the image of Jack casually cutting a Uragan guard’s throat with his heavy knife wouldn’t leave her mind when she looked at the Maori. I could take one of them, if it came to it. A. would be dead in the water. Jenna’s not a fighter. We’re basically alive on Moutinho’s sufferance right now: that, and he’s still wary of me. If he sees me flagging …
‘I’m fine,’ she told the big Maori, but right then she wished she had Drift’s talent for lies.
THE FAIL-SAFE
KUAI HAD TO admit, he was impressed.
Their small party – him, his sister, the Captain, Karwoski and Goldberg, and Chief Muradov – had been buzzed in through the thick security gates of the governor’s residence, which Muradov was even now shutting securely behind them. On the other side, the transport they’d been riding in was rumbling off somewhere else with the loyal security officers in it apparently now pretending that they were traitors. On this side, however …
‘Hey, you remember that summer when Mum and Dad took us to Hangzhou?’ Jia muttered, staring around them.
‘I was just thinking that,’ Kuai admitted. The air in here didn’t have the dry, recycled tang it had held in the rest of Uragan City, or for that matter that he’d got used to from years of travelling on the Keiko. It was not only several degrees warmer, but humid, and held the scent of green plants. Which wasn’t that surprising given that they were surrounded by the things.
The grounds of the governor’s residence were huge, at least by the
standard of a subterranean dwelling. Ahead of them, a wide gravelled path snaked between banks of verdant green grass, which were sprinkled here and there with what appeared to be naturally occurring wildflowers. Thick, dark green bushes with purple blossoms skulked up against the boundary wall on their right, while tucked away in the corner on the far left was a white wooden box which, Kuai realised in mild alarm, must be a beehive. Overhead in the roof were a series of lamps imitating the wavelength emitted by the sun, and providing not just light but also heat, if he was any judge.
‘Those are palm trees,’ Jia said, pointing. ‘He has palm trees. In his garden.’
‘And a stream,’ Kuai replied, his eyes focusing on the thread of glittering water just visible where the landscaped terrain dipped down and the gravel path gave way to a dark-stained wooden footbridge. He frowned. It obviously couldn’t be natural on this world, so presumably it was some sort of giant water feature, pumped away at one end and sent back to the start …
‘Restrained,’ the Captain commented to Muradov in English, the lenses on his mechanical eye widening slightly as he focused on their lush surroundings.
‘We have fled for our lives up and across a rioting city to our only hope of escape, and now we are here you want to offer sarcastic critique on the living arrangements of the man who holds the keys to it? He runs the entire planet, I would have thought that entitles him to something larger than an apartment,’ Muradov said in apparent disbelief. He waved a hand dismissively and set off up the path with the gravel crunching beneath his feet, heading towards the white building which took up the entirety of the far end of the garden. ‘Whatever. Follow me.’
‘Sure thing, Chief,’ Drift replied easily. Goldberg and Karwoski were already crunching up the path as well, so Jia and Kuai fell in behind them. Jia was frowning, an oddly dejected look on her face even for someone who’d lost her damnable hat.
‘What’s the matter?’ Kuai asked, making the effort to be a good brother despite expecting a belligerent or mocking response. To his surprise, Jia sighed and gestured vaguely around them.
‘Just reminds me, is all. We haven’t sent any money back home for a long time.’
Kuai shifted his shoulder uneasily. ‘Well—’
‘And don’t say it’s because we haven’t had none, because we have. We were both gambling on New Samara, you know we were.’
‘You more than me,’ Kuai replied reflexively, although it was true.
‘Like that’s the point.’
‘I’m just saying—’
‘What fucking words are you saying?!’ Jia exploded, rounding on him with hands waving. ‘If you’d come to me and said, “Hey, we should send some of this money back to our parents so they can move out of that shithole in Chengdu and get a nice place on the coast,” you think I’d have said, “No”?’ She turned away and continued trudging up the path, hands now sunk deep into the pockets of her flight suit. ‘We both fucked up, and that’s the end of it.’
‘Okay, fine,’ Kuai replied, glancing ahead of them. The Captain hadn’t turned, perhaps being so used to Jia’s shouting that he tuned it out, but Muradov had looked over his shoulder curiously. ‘You’re right. Okay? You’re right. We both should have thought about it. When we get off here and get back to New Samara, we’ll send … what, most of our share from the account? We’ll send that back to them.’
‘If we get back to New Samara,’ Jia grumbled. ‘We fucked this job up royally, you think the Captain’s gonna take us back to where …’ She trailed off suddenly with a glance ahead at Muradov, then lowered her voice. ‘To where Orlov can get his hands on us?’
‘What, the revolution is our fault?’ Kuai protested in a whisper. ‘Even if we’d got the data back to him, it’d still be useless. Nothing’s getting shipped out of here any time soon, so he’d have paid us for no reason.’
‘Oh yeah, I forgot,’ Jia snorted, ‘those crime lords are always so reasonable and logical, aren’t they?’
‘Whiner.’
‘Old head.’
‘Little rabbit kitten.’
‘White-eyed.’ They were on the bridge, and Jia looked over the railing into the sparkling water. ‘There’s fish in this!’
The front door of the mansion opened, and a tall, slim figure clad in a dark suit with the Russian-style breastplate piece emerged. ‘Alim?’
‘Sir!’ Muradov called, raising a hand in greeting and increasing his pace. The rest of them followed suit, and their party broke into a mild trot as they came out of the wooded valley-in-miniature and followed the path up over the lawn in front of the governor’s mansion.
‘Alim, who are all these people?’ Governor Drugov asked in Russian as they reached him, in a tone just short of demand. ‘Where are your officers?’ He had fine features and a nose a shade too sharp for Kuai’s taste, with a closely trimmed dark beard showing the same flecks of silver that decorated his temples, and his forehead was creased with frown lines that were currently getting heavy usage.
‘Sir, I regret to inform you that the vast majority of my officers are either captured, dead or have betrayed the Uragan government,’ Muradov replied, a little stiffly.
Drugov blinked, apparently unable to process this information. ‘What? I’d heard that things were bad, even before the comms went down, but …’
‘Sir, we were able to deal with even major crimes, and we could handle riots and protests,’ the security chief said heavily, ‘but this … Less than one per cent of the population was on my staff. We simply couldn’t suppress an uprising of this magnitude, especially when the rebels had an unforeseeable ability to access the security and communications systems.’
‘You should have come here sooner,’ Drugov replied. His eyes narrowed. ‘But you haven’t answered my question, Alim: who are these people, and why do some of them have guns?’
‘Sir,’ Muradov said, straightening a little, ‘this is Captain Ichabod Drift, of the Keiko. He’s a freelance trader who happened to be planetside when things began. He and the two crew with him intervened in a planned ambush on one of my squads and were able to assist in dispersing the rioters before any more casualties were sustained. He’s armed because I trust him to be so, and he’s kept me alive already over the last twelve hours.’ Muradov paused for a second, and coughed into his hand. ‘He, ah, also doesn’t speak much Russian.’
‘And he’s with you because …?’
‘Sir, with the martial-law curfew in effect and him with no refuge, I couldn’t leave him to be potentially shot by my officers,’ Muradov explained, ‘or to fall victim to a revenge attack by the revolutionaries.’
‘I see,’ Drugov said, although the tone of his voice and his expression suggested to Kuai that this might not be completely truthful. ‘And the others?’
‘The two North Americans are Lena Goldberg and Dugan Karwoski, members of a different ship’s crew,’ Muradov explained. ‘I took them into protective custody to prevent them from being hurt in the riots, when they’d been separated from their colleagues.
‘The Chinese siblings are Jia and Kuai Chang, Captain Drift’s pilot and mechanic, respectively. I thought that Jia, in particular, might be able to assist us.’
‘You did?’ Drugov appeared completely nonplussed. ‘In what manner?’
Muradov frowned in apparent confusion. ‘Sir, the revolution is seeking complete control of Uragan City, and probably hoping to spark similar uprisings in our other settlements. As planetary governor, they will be seeking to either arrest or simply execute you. They breached the security gates between city levels using mining charges in some cases, or simply overriding our security protocols in others. When they get here, and they’ll get here soon, we won’t be able to keep them out.’ He paused for a moment, but Drugov still seemed not to comprehend. Muradov spoke again, with just the faintest hint of trying to explain something to an unexpectedly obtuse child. ‘Sir, Miss Chang is by all accounts a pilot of unusual skill. The eye of the storm should be more or less abov
e us at this moment. I believe she may be able to pilot your shuttle into orbit, where we can dock with your vessel and make our way to New—’
‘Alim,’ Drugov said sharply, holding up one hand to cut the security chief off in mid-sentence. ‘Come with me, please.’ He turned and led the way into his mansion without looking back. Muradov frowned in apparent surprise, then started after him.
‘Everything going okay?’ Kuai heard Drift ask quietly in English at the security chief’s shoulder as their party moved somewhat uncertainly forwards.
‘Wonderfully, why do you ask?’
‘Was that sarcasm, Chief?’
‘Captain, if you would keep your mouth shut for a few minutes you may just succeed in not making things any more problematic.’
Kuai suppressed a snigger. He’d grown so used to the Captain being the smart-mouthed one in any given company that he found the professional, sober-countenanced Muradov verbally cutting him dead rather amusing. He looked around at Jia to see if she’d heard, but his sister was more concerned with their surroundings now they’d moved into the house.
‘Check it,’ Jia said in awe, drawing the last word out and turning slowly on the spot. The entrance hall, which was apparently climate-controlled to several degrees cooler than the sub-tropical environment in the garden, was a high-ceilinged atrium. The walls were lined with carved panels of a reddish wood, tall potted ferns stood in the corners and there was holographic artwork on the wall that looked expensive even to Kuai’s untrained eye. All in all, it was the sort of environment the Keiko’s crew never really experienced unless they’d just broken into it.
‘Yeah, just keep an eye on the Captain to make sure he doesn’t try to pocket anything,’ Kuai muttered, giving his sister a nudge to keep her moving in the direction of travel. The house seemed disturbingly empty to him: this was not a building that would be kept in such neat and tidy order by a man who ran a planet from it. There should be servants, surely? Doormen, security, an aide, a cleaner, someone. However, it appeared that none of them had showed up for work today.