by Mel Keegan
The Krait was as plush on the inside as it was ugly on the outside. The hatches closed up, and Marin felt a rush of warmth, smelt the sweet scents of joss, heard the soft, ambient sigh of music, machinery and low voices. The lights were amber and rose; the smoke was probably a mix of kip and bel grasses; the music issued from discreet amps, and Marin knew it. It was Bevan Daku. The last place he had heard this was in Robert Chandra Liang’s home.
He had no idea what he had expected of Fernando Wang’s ship, but this was not it. He began to wonder if Queneau had been lying, and shared a glance with Travers. But when he looked up into Vaurien’s face he saw something steely, guarded, as if Richard’s teeth were clenched and every sense had come alive.
The moment they stepped into the ship, Ramon vanished into a passage leading forward to the private quarters. He would be packing as swiftly as he knew how, and Marin’s curiosity was piqued. In the crew lounge, three men and two women were playing cards. The massive Folgen deck was dealt for a game which had been underway for some time. Beyond them was a wet bar, and tucked in beside it, an autochef. The ship’s fittings were very new, very slick. Marin was liking what he saw, until the servitors appeared from the lower deck.
A young man and a young woman, both naked, both collared and cuffed, with downcast eyes and a swiftness to serve which set off warning bells in Marin’s head. They were both lovely, and branded with the coiled-snake motif of this ship, this company. The brands were weeks or months old, well healed, one on the crest of each buttock. Both servitors were pierced with multiple rings in the most sensitive flesh they possessed, and Marin recognized those rings. One saw them in sexshops from the citybottom to the brightlights of any colony. Tethers clipped into them, and they would carry a current.
He shot a look at Vaurien, and Richard’s head shook minutely: don’t make anything of it. So Marin took a long breath, courting patience, and watched their charming host crack open a bottle of Velcastran Green Label. The whisky was twenty years old, literally worth its weight in colonial credits. At the bar, Fernando Wang held court with every old world grace.
“Take a seat, Richard – and tell me about this favor you’re doing me, for which I owe you so handsomely.”
Long-limbed and elegant, Vaurien took off the leather jacket and handed it to the servitor who was by his side before he could even begin to look for a place to put it. The girl hung it for him and returned to the bar, where her companion in bondage had begun to distribute shot glasses. Marin and Travers took the couch opposite the bar, and Marin was aware of Neil’s intense discomfort as he took his glass from the young man. In the seats by the bar, van Donne and Byrne seemed to notice nothing unusual, and Marin settled to wait.
“Boden Zwerner,” Vaurien said without preamble. “You and Sergei are trying to take the man down before he can pull out, and the next time you want a shot at him you’ll have to cut your way through Tactical, in the homeworlds. It might interest you to know that Harrison Shapiro bought the Dendra Shemiji contract on the same target … and Curtis Marin is here to fulfil it.”
Wang’s lips pursed, and he whistled. “Well, now, I’m impressed. Very. I didn’t know we numbered any Dendra Shemiji agents among our Freespacer complement.”
“You don’t, Mister Wang,” Marin said levelly. “I’m purely a freelance. I work via an agency, and I take only the jobs that interest me. Suffice to say, Boden Zwerner … interests me. He has a great deal to account for, and the only authority he’s ever likely to answer to is –”
“You,” Wang finished.
“Us,” van Donne corrected. His eyes were following the girl, who had finished with the shot glasses and was at the folgen table, clearing away the debris of a meal, until two of the players pushed back from the table, and she was propelled into an alcove off the crew lounge. “We’re on the same page here, Fernie. I spent the morning trading data for a shot at the fucker.”
Marin was trying not to listen to the grunts and muffled cries issuing from the alcove. They were distressed, not surprised or panicked, so whatever was taking place was routine. “We’re taking Zwerner tomorrow,” he said to Wang, “which gives Richard the time to pursue his own assignment here.”
“We?” van Donne echoed. “We, meaning I get a shot at him?”
“That was the deal,” Marin agreed. He watched the other servitor, the boy, subtly trying to avoid Wang, as if the man were a plague carrier. “You’re fetching the Mako up topside, when we leave here … and tomorrow you’ll be in at the kill.”
“Is that a fact?” Sergei’s pale brows rose. “What would make me move my ship?”
“The necessity for ease and speed of access when the moment comes,” Travers said smoothly. “Unless you don’t want in. Decide now, because you won’t have time to run home for your ride when the balloon goes up. When it happens, it’ll happen fast.”
“Consider it moved,” van Donne said promptly. “You going to tell me how it’ll go down?”
“No.” Marin saluted him with the glass and tried the Green Label. It was like liquid gold in his throat.
Wang applauded with a few sharp claps. “Bravo! And Ramon is quite correct, Richard. For this one, you can name a favor, call it in and expect it to be delivered.”
“In that case, I will.” Vaurien tossed back the whisky and handed the glass to the servitor. His eyes followed the young man back to the bar, where Wang caught him by the collar, dragged him close and handled him absently, so preoccupied with Vaurien that he seemed barely aware of the prisoner. “I need a favor, Fernie and I need it now,” Richard mused, as if he did not even notice the byplay. “There’s no time to waste trying to make contacts and win trust.”
“Name it,” Wang prompted. He was intent on Vaurien, and something in the lines of his face told Marin, he suspected what Richard was about to ask.
“Information,” Vaurien said levelly. “There’s two reasons we came to Halfway, and Zwerner is the second. The first … well, it’s no secret you were reeling in escape pods, after the battle at Ulrand.”
“No secret at all,” Wang said mildly. His brows arched at Vaurien. “I wasn’t there for the good of the Deep Sky, or for Harrison Shapiro’s benefit! I was there to make a profit. And we did very well. Ramon could have told you.”
“He wasn’t about to say two syllables about your business, Fernie,” Sergei said darkly. He gestured at the servitor. “You think Ramon wants to wind up like them, with his ass branded, and a collar on his neck, and rings in his tits and dick, so you can play him like a puppet?”
For a moment Wang blinked at him, and then laughed. “Ramon’s dangerous. You haven’t noticed? I wouldn’t punish him the way these two are finishing out their contract aboard this ship. These little creatures tried to double-cross me. They were taking jobs for themselves that should have come to me, and handing them off to friends and relations with Fleet experience, for a nice, fat commission. They’re paying their price, Sergei, and in six months they’ll be free to leave. You’re saying it’s unfair? You wanted me to flog them to death, or let Hatyara have them?”
“Hatyara?” Travers echoed.
“The krait,” Fernando Wang told him. “You’ll have heard the stories they tell about me and this ship. Let me save you the trouble of speculating. They’re all true – and a good many more stories you might not have heard, too.” He took a handful of the servitor’s hair and pulled his head back, exposing the long, clean line of his gullet. “They’ve had their whipping, they’ve settled down to service, and they’re paying their price with good graces. They won’t leave this ship one hour before their time is up, but when they do, they’ll walk away with their lives and their limbs. They’re lucky. Another captain would have shot them and dumped the bodies. You don’t recognize compassion when you see it, Sergei?”
“That’s an interesting word for it,” Marin said acidly.
Wang frowned at him. “Suggest another. Justice? You prefer to let them walk away, so they can tell tales of how
they double-crossed Fernie Wang and got away with it? Or you prefer them introduced to Hatyara?” He stroked the servitor’s shoulder and flank. “What a waste that would be. The krait produces a neurotoxin which destroys the peripheral venous system. The body dies slowly from the outside in, and rots long before the brain has enough sense to perish. It takes days, perhaps a week, if the subject is strong, by which time there’s not much left but blue-black tatters of flesh and stinking suppuration of all colors. Most … unpleasant. And no, I wouldn’t introduce Ramon to Hatyara, either, if he double-crossed me. Him, I would kill outright, because if I gave him the shade of a chance, he’d send me to hell ahead of him.” He paused, and gave the servitor a push which sent him sprawling onto Sergei’s lap. “You want him? Have him. Actually, he’s quite good, and getting better with the training.”
“Later, maybe.” With an expression of contempt, van Donne shoved the servitor away.
“Speaking of Ramon,” Wang mused, “where is he?”
“Packing,” van Donne told him baldly. “He’s jumping ship, Fernie. He’s on the Mako now.”
“Is that so?” Wang seemed perturbed for a moment, and then shrugged. “He’s a free man, I don’t hold his contract. He was useful to have around, but it’s no secret he has the hots for you.” He gave van Donne a disdainful sniff. “There’s no accounting for taste. And I have to commend the boy for his loyalty – either that or his good sense. He said little or nothing of my business after Ulrand. I’ve nothing to punish … there, you see? How easy it is not to make enemies. Now, why can’t they all be so intelligent?” He watched the girl stumble out of the alcove, shook his head disapprovingly over her. She disappeared deeper into the ship, and Wang lifted a brow at Vaurien. “I took possession of a good number of the Shanghai survivors. I picked up over twenty. That’s smart business, Richard. I wasn’t the only one scooping the poor, bedraggled little rats out of space.”
Perhaps only Marin heard Vaurien draw a long breath in some quest for patience. “Sergei said you transshipped them through a Freespacer agent on Ulrand.”
“Yes.” Wang returned to the Green Label for another glass. “All suppliers were paid crap prices, damnit … and I think I know what you’re asking. If I’d waited a while, haggled a little, I think Harrison Shapiro might have paid more to get them back. Yes?”
“Probably.” Vaurien stood restlessly, unable to be still. “We know you have no clue where the agent delivered the stock, but they came to Halfway, nothing’s so sure. Intel, Fernie. All we want is the contact. We’ll chase the Shanghai kids. Now, Sergei tells me there’s a deadhead off this ship, a moron who likes to skull out in the club right there – Gemini. Name of Talantov.”
“Talentless,” Wang said in arid tones. “The most useless lump of semi-animate human flesh I’ve ever had the misfortune to take under contract … yet the brainless little shit is also the most loyal hand I ever hired, he’ll do what he’s told, and he never tries to cheat me. What can you say? You want Kolya, you’ll have to go dig him out of some pit he’s gotten himself into. Take Ramon with you. He’s spent enough time in Gemini to know the lie of the land. And if you’re going to dig up Kolya, you better take these.” He stooped, reached under the bar, and produced a red plastex case. “Blockers. He’s going to be high as a kite. One day he’s going to crash and burn, but … just so long as it’s not today, right?” He tossed the case into Vaurien’s hand. “For what it’s worth, Talantov can probably plug you right into the pipeline better than I could myself. I might dock down here, but I don’t mix with the lowlives.” He produced a wide, quite charming smile. “I just take their money and move on.” He gave Curtis Marin a curious look. “And when I hear of the demise of Boden Zwerner tomorrow, well, suffice to say, the time to move on will have arrived.”
Vaurien gestured with the case. “Thanks for this. As soon as Ramon’s done, we’ll get out of your way.”
“Oh, stay awhile,” Wang invited. “Avail yourselves of the … entertainments.”
His eyes were on the servitor as he made the offer, and Marin saw the old anger. “Thanks, but we have things to do. Richard?” He was on his feet as he spoke.
“Only waiting for Ramon,” Vaurien said tersely.
As if it were a cue, the younger man stepped out of the passage. He carried a scarlet duffel in his left hand and a silver-trim backpack over one shoulder. With a self-mocking grin he offered his hand to Wang, and Wang took it, clasped it.
“Hey, mi viejo amigo, me tengo que ir, entiendes?”
“Of course.” Wang released his hand and sketched him a salute. “It was fine having you aboard. Do I owe you?”
“No, man. It’s been a pleasure. But … you know.” Ramon gestured at van Donne with a nod of his raven-maned head. “Ya sabes lo que es.”
And Wang chuckled. “Your gonads will be the death of you yet. I wish you well, Ramon. When you’re all fucked out and squabbling like sibling brats, give me a call if you want to come back.”
“Part as friends and allies,” Ramon intoned, as if it were an old saying. “Take care of yourself, Fernie.” Then he turned to Sergei, spread his hands. “It’s a done deal. You want to go find the deadhead?”
“Me? No. But they need to.” Sergei glanced at Vaurien, Marin and Travers. “We made a deal, kiddo, but I don’t have to go into that pit. Rafe and me are going to go move the ship topside. You want to throw your bags aboard? All right, Marin, this is your circus. Where do you want the Mako?”
Marin had been thinking through the situation for some time, and he gave Vaurien an apologetic look. “Hangar 4, dorsal, on the Wastrel, if you don’t mind. That’ll put you in the best place when the time comes.”
A pained look crossed Vaurien’s face, but he gave his assent with a curt nod. He nailed van Donne with a glare which told the man he would be under surveillance, every instant. Sergei only grinned brashly before he gave his hand to Wang in passing, and headed aft to the docking hatch without looking back.
As they stepped back into the chill, aromatic darkness, Vaurien was talking to the Wastrel. Greenstein was on watch; Ingersol was in the ops room. Neither relished the news that the Mako was coming aboard, but on Vaurien’s order they beefed up surveillance on the dorsal decks, and Greenstein’s voice said,
“All right, van Donne, we’re prepping 4. You’re invited.”
At the Mako’s docking ring, Ramon handed his bags to Byrne with a muttered promise to meet them on the Wastrel. The words were almost lost in the bass booming out of Gemini, noise which echoed and re-echoed off bulkheads, becoming confused, distracting. Dangerous.
The din issuing from the club continued without pause, as if five or eight sets of amps were blaring several different sound tracks, only some of which were music. Others might have been voices shouting, or the roar of big engines. The vibration through the deck was fierce, and if Marin had thought Flamenco Rosado was loud, he learned a new meaning for the word here.
The lights were red as emergency lights. Some of them strobed, while vast areas were unlit, as if no one wanted what happened there to be seen. Vaurien’s face was a mask as he and Travers stepped into the cavern-like foyer and peered around.
It was Travers who saw the cache of maintenance equipment hung up by one of the many conduits which bisected this deck. It would have been the very keel of the old Rotterdam Explorer, where service bays, access points, power, water and data channels were placed, well away from the human crew, where drones could work unobserved. Travers had seen a single worklight, and Marin watched him retrieve it, adjust the ill-fitted power cell, and then pan the white beam into corners where no photon might ever have fallen before.
“So what are we looking for?” Vaurien was saying to Ramon. “You know this place?”
“Not well,” Ramon shouted over the din. “But I know where Kolya’s going to be.” He caught Vaurien’s sleeve. “Keep an eye open for management goons. Outsiders aren’t supposed to fuck with patrons in mid-trip. Insiders – no problem
. It’s all the same when you’re one of the merry band. But they protect their own.”
“And how do you tell management from patrons?” Travers demanded. He was still panning the light this way and that, picking out the shapes of figures hunched at tables, collapsed against walls, and the writhing tangle of the dancers under the strobes.
“The management goons,” Ramon told him, “are sober, and upright. Not many patrons fit that description. Follow me.”
He cut a line around the chaos of the dance floor, past the bar and into a network of passages and tiny rooms where bodies heaved and writhed, some screaming, some groaning. The air was as heavy with pheromones as with gryphon and angelino, and Marin was conscious of the sweat that broke out on his sides, his temples.
A woman walked into him, blind in the darkness. He caught her as she staggered, felt bare limbs, the soft cushions of breasts, the hard lines of leather straps, as he set her back onto her feet. He picked his way carefully, stepping over two bodies, gender beyond anything he could discern, locked together and heaving in the dense gloom.
This whole club was built into a single storage bay, where the Rotterdam Explorer’s tractors would once have been housed. The walls were bulkheads and panels torn from other parts of the ship and tack-welded in place where they were needed.
It was a warren. Marin had never been particularly claustrophobic, but he began to feel the odd, elusive sense of pressure, suffocation, and the desire to be out of here. From the look on Travers’s face, he was feeling something similar, and Marin knew without asking what it reminded him of.
He would be haunted by memories of the shelter on the low decks of the Intrepid, in the moments before and after the Echo gunship plowed into her. The smell of fear, the crush of human bodies, the closeness of armored walls, darkness, strobes –
With an effort of will Marin set aside the sensations and the memories, and focused on the beam of the worklight as Ramon led them back through the maze, to a cubicle he seemed to know. He lifted aside a drape, and within the tiny space they saw a cot, a VR hookup, a tiny table littered with the debris of the session. A few phials, a bottle, a capsule still unused, another torn in half.