There were Varoki independents in-station as well, but I thought I’d have better luck with the Humans. Although I’d told Marfoglia that independents were all a bit crooked, that wasn’t really true. It was true for most Human captains, though, for a couple reasons. First, being a little bit shady had become an element of Human pride out here. We might be at the bottom of the pecking order when it came to most things, but by God we could steal with the best of them. Second reason kind of went along with that: it was harder to make it on the level as a Human-mastered ship, because everyone else in the Cottohazz figured you were a crook anyway, so it was okay to screw you every chance they got, just to stay even.
So we sat there and talked. Actually, the mate and I talked; the captain just shoveled down the tofu katsu as if he hadn’t eaten in a week, and he was skinny enough he might not have. His hair was dark and straight, thinning on top, and there was an Asian cast to his features, with mischief lines around his eyes. The mate had introduced him as Joe Lee Ping. The mate—guy named Jim Turncrank—was short and stocky, with hard eyes and an unsmiling mouth that told me the best thing you could say about his life was that he’d made it this far. If he’d had any joy in recent memory, he hid it well, and nobody hides it that well. The captain of the Long Shot was the opposite. He wasn’t just enjoying the tofu katsu, he was savoring it, relishing it, thinking hard about how good it was as he chewed, so he’d be sure to remember it later. I liked him right away. Here was a guy knew how to live.
I laid out our problem, giving them as much truth as I felt comfortable with. I didn’t want to make a big deal about the Co-Gozhak maybe being after us, in case that scared them away, but I had to explain that I figured there was a guy inside leaking to his pals outside, which was why we needed to stay below the sensor horizon. I also let them know the general situation with the kids, but didn’t tell them their real name; a name as big as e-Traak would scare too many people away—probably scare away everyone with any sense.
I got done, and the whole time it was as if the captain was in a different world, or at least at a different table. But when Turncrank looked at him, something passed between them—not a yes, but not quite a no, either.
Turncrank settled back in his chair, took a pull on his beer, and looked me over.
“So, what’s your story? You’re, like, Russian, huh?”
“Ukrainian . . . or my parents were. I’m second generation Crack Trash—don’t even speak the old lingo, except a few dirty words. No story really worth telling. I ran some rackets back in the Crack, but I had a . . . a falling out with senior management, so figured it was time to move on. This gig came along and I took it. Not sure it was the best move I ever made, but sometimes the timing forces your hand.”
The captain was watching me now as he continued to chew, and he nodded and grunted his agreement with that.
“So that’s it?” Turncrank asked. “You’re just some small-time crook from Peezgtaan? You act like you’ve been around, and there’s talk about some guy shooting the shit with Zack dirt soldiers like he was their brother. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”
So they’d done at least a little homework.
“Yeah. I soldiered a bit ten years back.”
“Where?” he asked.
“Nishtaaka,” I answered, and his eyes narrowed in suspicion and disbelief. The captain grinned and shook his head, looking down at the food, as if I’d been caught in some kind of lie.
“Every swinging dick from here to Sol claims they were on Nishtaaka,” Turncrank said, scowling. “Thing is, I was there, and I don’t remember you.”
“Lotta people went to Nishtaaka,” I said, but he shook his head.
“Lots of guys went, but not that many came back, and after the surrender they kept all of us in a processing compound for seven weeks before they shipped us out—those they pardoned. I figure I know about everyone still alive from the Ram and Gray Phantom brigades, at least by sight.”
“Never said I was in one of the rogue brigades.”
“Then what the hell . . . ?”
“A.C.G.,” I answered. “Third Cohort, Peezgtaan Loyal Volunteers—The Piss-Can Rangers to our friends.”
The captain’s eyes got a little bigger, and he glanced at his mate, as if expecting trouble. A.C.G. was short for Attatti Cottohazz Gozhakampta—Co-Gozhak Reserves.
“So it’s probably just as well we didn’t run into each other,” I added, and smiled.
Turncrank’s face remained a sour, but otherwise expressionless, mask. There was silence for maybe ten seconds, and then he spoke.
“You guys sucked.”
“So I’ve heard it said.”
“Where were you?”
“We went in behind the Zacks at Sikander’s Mountain. Then they shifted us over to the Garden. Mostly I pushed ’bots, while we had some. Resupply was all screwed up anyway, so once you guys broke the Needle, and everyone ran out of ’bots to push, the leather-heads pushed us—foot patrols, sensor sweeps, you know.”
“Yeah, you’re breaking my heart.” After a moment he asked, “Kill anyone?”
I looked him in the eye and nodded.
He thought for a while and then shifted uncomfortably in his chair, scowling.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “You’re pretty damned chummy with leather-heads and Zacks.”
He wanted me to say something then—deny it, justify it, something—but I didn’t. After a moment his scowl turned into a puzzled frown and he shook his head.
“Well, maybe if you were a spook, you’d be telling us how much you hated them,” he admitted reluctantly. “Maybe you’re for real. Maybe. But maybe you’re just a real smart liar. If I hadn’t told you I was with the Rams on Nishtaaka, how do I know you wouldn’t have stuck with some kind of story about being a rogue brigade hero?”
So I rolled up my sleeve and showed him the Piss-Can Rangers tattoo on my left forearm, right below the bandage from the knife wound.
“I don’t got a Ram Brigade tattoo hidden away anywhere, but since I’m not about to do a striptease, you’re just gonna have to take my word for it.”
The captain laughed then, and even Turncrank grunted what might have been something a little like a laugh. Marfoglia and the two kids looked over, but without any alarm. Obviously things were going well.
The captain leaned over and slapped my shoulder with more force than I’d have thought a skinny guy like him would have.
“You have a sense of humor, Sasha Naradnyo. I like that. And I think you have been here and there. I tell you the truth, were it simply you we would have nothing to do with you, but the children . . . not even the Co-Gozhak use children as agents. You and your people are welcome to share our voyage.”
“Ah, shit,” Turncrank said in resignation.
“Pay him no heed,” the captain said, and smiled. “He is not nearly as ferocious as he pretends. And speaking of ferocity . . . your lady has that appearance.”
“Yeah, and appearances aren’t always deceiving. She’s not my lady, though. I’m between ladies right now.”
“Oh. I sense the last one may have hurt you.”
“She tried to murder me.”
“Ah, yes. Very bad for relationship.”
* * *
Marfoglia and the kids joined us after that, and we actually had a pretty nice dinner. Captain Ping started talking like an old-time pirate and made Marfoglia and the kids laugh—me, too, once in a while—and if Turncrank wasn’t the happiest guy in the world, at least he wasn’t looking for a fight. He didn’t say much, but he kept glancing at Marfoglia now and then, when she was looking away. I looked at her and tried to see her through a stranger’s eyes, through the eyes of someone who hadn’t had to put up with her bullshit for the last couple weeks, and she looked pretty good. But looks aren’t everything.
I’d been keeping an eye on the restaurant clientele all through the meeting so far, and there was one guy I was pretty sure was watching us. He was an older gu
y, balding, overweight, and sitting by himself. He was taking his time over his food, stretching the meal out, and he was interested in everyone in the restaurant—except for us. He kept looking around, studying everyone, but he was careful never to look at our table, and he’d never looked at Marfoglia and the kids when they were at a separate table, either.
When birds stop singing . . .
“So, you were in the Garden?” Turncrank asked after a while.
“Yeah,” I answered. “Almost two hundred days.”
“The Garden?” Marfoglia asked, having overheard us. “That sounds nice.”
Turncrank and I both laughed, and Marfoglia colored a bit, her eyebrows coming together in irritation.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Nishtaaka’s a really swell place. Bare-ass granite mountains that stick up almost out of the atmosphere, poles under a hundred meters of ice—that’s where most of the water’s locked up—lots of arid plains nobody’s gotten around to looking at real close, and a so-called habitable tropical zone that’s all overcooked sand or low-lying marsh. They call the biggest marsh the Garden, because they have a sense of humor.”
“Only place I ever been,” Turncrank said, nodding “where you can be up to your waist in swamp water and have dust blowing in your eyes.”
“It’s got bugs the size of your thumb,” I added, holding up my thumb as a visual aid to the kids, whose eyes were locked on us, “that Human blood’s poisonous to, and they bite you anyway, just out of spite.”
“Damn!” he said. “Yeah, I’d just about forgotten about the bugs. Thanks for refreshing that memory.”
We looked at each other for a moment, and then he held up his beer mug. I clinked it with mine, and we drank to Nishtaaka and made our separate peace.
“So, what made the likes of you volunteer?” Captain Joe asked.
“What else?” I answered. “A judge. They had me on three counts of burglary, and he suggested that a stint in the defense corps might be preferable to six years in detention.”
“I’ve heard the really good burglars never get caught,” Marfoglia said coolly, and the captain and Turncrank both laughed.
“Good? I was an artist,” I answered. “My fence just got greedy, did some stupid things, got caught, and rolled over on a bunch of us to keep himself out of detention. Otherwise, they’d have never caught me. I did over twenty jobs, some of them very high end, and never once tripped an alarm, never once showed up on vid or saw an awake person. I never even carried a weapon, back in those days. That’s probably why the judge gave me an out. Nonviolent offender.”
“In retrospect, that doesn’t seem to have been a very sound decision on his part,” she offered dryly. The captain and Turncrank laughed again, good and loud.
“Yeah, well. Hindsight’s 20-20,” I answered, and I grinned myself. Why not? We were alive and free, our bellies were full, and we were shipping out with the Pirate Cap’n Joe Lee Ping on the morning tide. Argh.
So like I said—and despite the verbal sparring—not a bad dinner at all.
Until Rosen showed up.
Rosen was in his thirties, tall, and too handsome, if you know what I mean. I took one look at him and felt like I’d known him forever. He was one of those guys who acts his way through life, all passion and intensity and self-importance on the outside, and on the inside an insecure little punk. You’ve probably known dozens of them. He had one of those superior smirks that right away makes you want to just take a poke at him. The lady with him—I found out later her name was Abby—was short, slender, with fair skin but dark hair. I’d say she was about ten years younger than he was—not quite old enough to have figured him out yet, but give her a couple of years and she’d dust his ass—or end up running the show. She had that look of real smarts, real determination, and a hard edge in her eyes I liked right away. She was the real thing, and the bulge under her jacket meant she was packing heat.
My kind of gal.
They came in past the two Zacks, looked around, and then headed for our table. Turncrank saw them coming, and his face didn’t change, but he kept his eyes on them as they crossed the room.
“Captain Ping, Jim Turncrank! Hey, great to see you!” Rosen gushed when they got to the table, and he laid it on just thick enough that you knew he didn’t mean it. Then he looked at me and grinned.
“So, you must be Sasha. Or is it Sam Black today? I don’t want to blow your cover or anything.” Then he and his woman laughed. He scanned the table and as his eyes settled on the two kids for a moment, just for that moment the smile left his face and I saw something dark and hard. Then his eyes moved on and the phony smile returned
“Well, gotta run, folks. Just wanted to stop and say hi,” he said. “Oh, and Kolya sends his regards,” he added, looking at me, and then he made a pistol from his hand, pointed the barrel at me, and made the thumb/hammer go back and forth a couple times, all the while smirking as if this was a great big joke. He and his lady started to leave, but when they were a dozen steps away he paused, glanced back at us, and had a short talk with her. Then they hurried off in different directions.
I looked over, and the kids were confused, not sure whether to be scared or not. I made a sour face.
“What an asshole, huh?” I said, and Barraki smiled nervously.
“You a friend of Kolya Markov’s?” Turncrank asked.
“Not so much these days.”
He nodded and exchanged a look with the captain.
“Well, Rosen is,” Turncrank said. “That’s his name, Clyde Rosen. He’s also the only other real Nishtaaka rogue veteran around here . . . and he’s more than just that. I’m not sure how much more, but he’s hit me up a couple times to join some underground army he claims to have. The war’s definitely not over for him, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he had something to do with the Brukata thing. I don’t know why the provosts haven’t rounded him up yet.”
“So you’re saying we should be careful,” I said.
Captain Joe gave me a fond smile.
“He only means we would appreciate your fares in advance.”
FIFTEEN
Once we had the kids in bed, I went into my room and got the little LeMatt 5mm automatic from my room safe, along with the three autoinjector units I kept for occasions like this. I slipped the autoinjectors into the right pocket of my slacks and the LeMatt in the left. Then I went back into the main room and looked around. There was a wall mirror that would do the trick. I moved a chair over to the entryway and got up on it, took out my pocketknife, and sawed a square opening in the overhead acoustic tile.
“What are you doing?” Marfoglia demanded.
“I’ll show you in a minute.”
“You can’t do that . . . we don’t own this suite.”
“Gee, then I guess you won’t get your security deposit back,” I answered, and I kept sawing. Once I had a hole wide enough for the mirror frame, I cut a smaller one about thirty centimeters farther away from the door. I took a stylus out of my pocket and wrapped the wire frame hanger around it twice. I put the bottom of the mirror frame up into the big hole, then pushed the stylus up through the small hole, turned it sideways inside, and had a solid suspension point. That held the mirror almost flush with the ceiling, but tilted down a bit facing the door. I carved on the big hole a little and adjusted the wire hanger so the mirror was at an angle to the side.
I got down and moved the chair back inside the lounge area, off to the side so it wasn’t directly visible to the door. All the time Marfoglia stared at me as if I was crazy, still angry that I was doing all this damage, but curious, too. I waved her over and had her sit in the chair.
“Can you see the door in the mirror from here?” I asked.
She shook her head, so we slid the chair to the side until she could. Then I knelt down beside her, took the LeMatt out of my pocket, and put it in her hand. Once again I showed her how to take the safety off and put it back on, how to release the magazine and put in a new one, and I gave her one
more magazine. If it actually came to shooting, she’d never get a chance to reload, but I figured having it might make her feel better.
While I was explaining all of this, her anger went away and I could see she was getting scared. That was okay.
“Now, here’s the deal,” I said. “I’ve got to go out and take care of something, because if I don’t, we aren’t getting out of here alive. You understand?”
She nodded hesitantly.
“Okay. When I’m gone, lock the door behind me. If somebody knocks, don’t go look through the peep lens to see who it is, because they will shoot you through the door. Don’t even answer the knock; just sit here. If they come through the door, they’ll have to break it. You’ll see them briefly in the mirror. Shoot them as they come around the corner. If they’re dressed as housekeeping, or the purser, or the provosts, shoot them. Housekeeping, or the purser, or the provosts won’t break down the door; they’ll use the station’s central grid to override the lock. Do you understand?”
She nodded jerkily, eyes now wide with fear.
“If the door opens without a knock, and it’s not me, shoot them. It means I’m dead and they have my key. Anyone with legitimate access to the central grid will knock and identify themselves before entering. Do you understand?”
She nodded again.
“If it’s me and there’s anyone with me, shoot them, no matter what I say. No matter what I say. If I’m in the way, shoot me first, and then shoot them. Do you understand that?”
“I . . . I don’t know if I can do that,” she said.
“Sure you can. You probably wanted to a dozen times already.”
I expected a smile from her there, but didn’t get one.
“Look, if I’m with someone, and you don’t shoot, you’re not saving my life, ’cause they’re going to kill me anyway, and then you. You have to understand that. They are going to kill both of us to get to those two kids in the other room, and then they’re going to kill them. I’m going to do what I can to stop that, but if I fail, then you and this pistol are all that’s going to be left between those kids and death, so you have to shoot.
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