by Mel Keegan
“Richard, we should have been expecting you.” Asako Rodman sounded far from surprised and not a little cynical to see the Wastrel.
She had left Ulrand one of the losers. Her Harlequin was still drydocked there, undergoing repairs which proceeded only as fast as the Fleet casualties could be broken down and cannibalized for the spare parts needed to get the Freespacer ship back into service. Far from earning a rich reward for flying for Harrison Shapiro, she had lost a great deal, and she would be sore about it for a long time to come.
“I wish I could say the same,” Vaurien was saying, “but you’re the last person I’d be looking for in his dump. What brings you here?”
“Work,” Rodman said baldly. “I won’t get the Harlequin back for another month, maybe two, and I’m up to my eyeballs in hock, paying Ulrish prices for the job. You listening, Barb?”
And Jazinsky, from the lab: “I’m here, Asako. And you sound like you need a favor or three.”
“Or a half dozen,” Rodman muttered, “but I’ll settle for one. No way in hell can I get my hands on a new computer core, and I’m toast without one. I was wondering if you or Shapiro maybe figures you owe me an assist. Get us out of the hole we’re in.”
“Get us out of crappy dives like Celeste,” Roark Hubler’s gruff voice added, “before we do something disgusting, to get the money to stop doing things we’re ashamed of.”
“Roark.” Travers leaned closer to the mic. “It’s good to hear you, man. How’re you doing since … you know.”
Since he lost his legs at Omaru, lost his blood brother to the Drift, resigned his Fleet commission and signed with the Freespacers. None of it needed to be said, but Marin was keenly aware of every unspoken detail and his skin prickled, as if the ghost of Michael Vidal were standing behind him, breathing the coldness of another, fractured dimension, across the nape of his neck.
“Workin’, like she said,” Hubler growled. This piss-pot of a ship is just about enough to get us into real trouble, not enough to get us back out again. We been insystem for twelve hours, and we’ve had six offers of jobs that’d get us blown to red-hot shrapnel. So what’s the deal, Jazinsky?”
In fact, Shapiro owed Roark Hubler a good deal, and even if he were unwilling to pick up the tab for a new AI core for the Harlequin, it would be simple for Vaurien to lose the price of the hardware in the ocean of expenses Fleet Borushek was covering.
“Don’t sweat it, Rodman,” Vaurien was saying. “In fact, it’s lucky you’re here.”
She groaned. “Shit, that sounds like you want something.”
“They always want something,” Hubler scoffed.
“So, what is it?” Rodman demanded.
“Not on the air,” Jazinsky said sharply. “You’re parked over Celeste … we’ll be with you in forty minutes. Why don’t you come over –”
“Why don’t you give us a reason,” Hubler said acidly.
Vaurien chuckled. “All right. How about some very good food, and a ten year old brandy, and you can pick out your hardware?”
“That’ll do it.” Rodman barked a laugh. “Two hundred bucks says I know why you’re here.”
“No takers,” Jazinsky said loudly. “And keep it to yourself, Asako.”
“If you want your computer core,” Vaurien added.
“Message received and understood,” she assured him. “We’ve been listening to you, calling Belczak. He’s not answering.”
“You know why that would be?” Jazinsky asked.
Rodman snorted. “He’s not the social kind. “You’ll probably get one of the ass-kissers, when the little bastards deign to respond. Right now they’ll be running around, shouting at each other. Who knows Vaurien? Who’s flown with him, dealt with him, been double-crossed by him, looked down the business-end of his guns. You know anybody here?”
“It’s … possible,” Vaurien admitted. “I know the two of you, and I never expected to find you here. God knows who else is here.”
“You double-crossed anybody lately?” Hubler snickered.
“Depends,” Jazinsky told him, “on your point of view. The only one who might say he got the wrong end of a deal is Sergei … and we know for a fact he’s not on Celeste.”
“Do you, now?” Rodman mused.
“I do,” Vaurien said dryly, “since we have him aboard.”
Both Hubler and Rodman were silent for several moments, and then Hubler demanded, “You have van Donne on the Wastrel? And he’s still kicking and breathing?”
“Ask him yourself,” Jazinsky suggested. “He was at Halfway, and I’ll give you three guesses why.”
Again Rodman and Hubler skipped a beat, before Hubler asked in an odd, hoarse whisper, “And Zwerner?”
The man who had set up the situation which cost him his legs. Marin acknowledged a shiver, but Vaurien said only, “Not on the air. If you know Belczak’s people, you could give ’em a call, tell ’em I want to talk to the headman … and it’s about a hell of a lot of money.”
“That might get their attention.” Travers swiveled out his seat and dropped a hand on Marin’s arm. “She’s as prepped as she needs to be – we don’t have to sit here. You want to get a beer?”
“Yeah.” Marin stood, slid easily into Travers’s embrace for a moment and took a kiss on his way out of the cockpit. “Rodman seems to know as much about Celeste as Sergei does. Which could be useful.”
They were in the crew lounge, arguing the relative merits of Marshall over Rand with Ingersol and Grant, when the AI announced that the Wastrel had entered Celeste high orbit and it was shutting down drive engines. Marin had known seconds before Etienne informed them. The subtle vibration through the deck had begun to speak to him, as it spoke to Vaurien. He had been on this ship long enough for it to begin to feel like home turf, and for the hundredth time he wondered why Travers had refused Vaurien’s offers so long ago, when his conscription was up and he could have walked away from the service.
There was no accounting for a young man’s fancies, Marin decided. But the whim had given him Neil Travers, and he was not about to look this particular gift horse askance. He gave Travers a wry smile as the AI spoke, and when Travers lifted a brow at him, clearly wondering what was on Marin’s mind, he only shook his head, finished his beer and pushed away from the table.
A chime from the comm, and Vaurien’s voice said, “Heads up, people. The Hong Lung is coming across to join us. They’re docking at number four, Barb, Neil, if you want to be there.”
“We do,” Travers said quietly. He angled a dark look at Marin. “Veterans of Omaru, all of us.”
And Asako Rodman had been there twice, on both sides of the fence, flying with Fleet during the years of her hitch, and then running the blockade as a Freespacer. Of them all, Roark Hubler’s memories of Omaru were the most bitter. CL-389 was the fight from which he had not walked away.
Spinners and sirens were already filling the passages just aft of Hangar Four with red light and annoying wailing as Marin and Travers joined a bevy of service drones by the inner ring of the docking adaptor. Finger-thick armorglass fogged over as the two ships sealed and the vacuum of space was pumped up to partial pressure. The ring unlocked with a hiss, a rush of equalizing air.
Four meters away, the ’lock on the Hong Lung was cycling as Jazinsky stepped out of the service lift with a bottle of Holstein vodka in one hand and a bottle of Velcastran Irish whiskey in the other. She favored Travers and Marin with a rueful smile and gestured with the bottles.
“You ready to get shitfaced? Because you know Hubler’s going to dive right off the deepend, and as for Asako – she can drink you under the table six days a week and twice on the seventh.”
Marin groaned. “Damnit, Barb, keep them sober long enough to get through this!”
But Jazinsky’s white-blond head was shaking. “Not a chance. It’s going to take too long here. Belczak still isn’t even acknowledging the fact we’ve been calling since we drove insystem. He’s going to be a bastar
d, which means this is going to take time … time enough for Roark to get plastered, get over it and get useful.”
“Okay,” Travers allowed. “And you seem to know Rodman.”
“Oh, I know Rodman.” Jazinsky pulled back the big Pakrani shoulders, which were clad in a leather jacket over the familiar pale blue jumpsuit. She had just stepped out of the lab, and it was strikingly cold down on the service decks where normally only drones worked. “I know Asako way too well.”
“Oh?” Travers glanced sidelong a Marin. “She came headhunting, tried to poach you away from Richard’s operation?”
“More than once.” Jazinsky shrugged. “They were good offers, and I like Asako well enough, but … this ship’s become home. And Richard has more resources, which means I can spend a whole lot more time in research, which is where I live. And from here I have access to the Resalq science community, which is something Rodman couldn’t give me, because she’s no more aware of Mark’s people than anyone else out there is. One day,” she added thoughtfully, “they might come out.”
But not before the Colonial Wars were over, and not before the Zunshu question had been resolved. Marin made no comment, and stood back as the Hong Lung’s ’lock growled open.
“Watch out for Rodman,” Jazinsky muttered. “She’s been in a fine fury since Ulrand, when the Harlequin was busted up before she could get her hands on a decent share.”
But if Asako Rodman had a bone to pick, it was not with anyone on this ship, and to Marin’s eyes she seemed resigned, almost philosophical about it as she stepped through the ‘locks, a pace ahead of Roark Hubler. She was in the familiar battered denim and well-worn leather. Her hair was red-blond now, flattened back from her forehead by a black silk bandanna.
It was Hubler who wore the dark face, the eyes blazing with rage he could barely contain. He looked fit again, Marin thought. He looked as if he had been working hard; his face was lean but not gaunt, and the service pants and denim shirt were stretched taut over a lot of muscles. The blond hair was growing out from its familiar service buzz, but the unit tattoo was still emblazoned on his left cheek. Hubler would probably always wear it. He had acquired a pair of gold hoops in both his lobes since the last time they had seen him, and the smoke from a smoldering cheroot narrowed his eyes as he stomped in Rodman’s wake, heavy-footed, like anyone in his situation.
He was moving better on the biocyber legs, but if Marin was any judge, they still hurt him. Veterans said it could take years to get used to them – and Hubler was one of the lucky ones. The last thing Mick Vidal had done for him, before the flight of the Orpheus, was to authorize the cloning procedures for a new pair of legs. Real legs, his own legs, were being grown in a tank at the medical facility at Fleet Borushek.
The only catch was, it took eighteen months, minimum, for a limb to be ready for transplant. Roark would be stomping on the biocyber prostheses for a long time to come, and they all too obviously aggravated him, as if every step reminded him of Omaru, of Mick Vidal and CL-389 – and Boden Zwerner.
Travers offered his hand to the man as Jazinsky greeted Rodman with the bottle of Irish. “Roark. You’re looking better, man.”
“I am. Thanks for noticing.” Hubler took the offered hand, clasped it, let it go. “Onward and upward … if you can call it upward. I signed with Rodman, but now we can’t get the fuckin’ dock in Ulrand to finish the job and let the Harlequin go. And before you say word one, it ain’t got squat to do with money. They can’t get the parts. But I’ll just bet old Rick Vaurien could swing it.”
“I’ll just bet,” Travers agreed. “Talk to him. Tell him what you need … tell him to bill Shapiro.”
Rodman’s heavy brows rose, creasing her forehead. “Serious?”
“I think so.” Travers shared a glance with Marin. “You know as well as we all do, push is coming to shove. You did your share at Ulrand, but it’s not over –”
“It is for me,” Rodman said quickly, loudly.
“Maybe,” Marin agreed, “but only if you want to lose yourself in places like Halfway and Celeste. The only way to stay the hell out of the Colonial War is to hang out in Freespace and hope it doesn’t spill over and come looking for you.” He studied Rodman’s face, searching for a reaction. “You want a piece of the legitimate Deep Sky, now’s the time to grab it.”
“Well … shit,” Rodman said slowly. She jerked a thumb at Hubler. “He’s been saying the same thing.”
Hubler only shrugged. “If Vaurien’s operation can go legit, anyone’s can, is all I’ve been saying. What about van Donne?”
“Ask him yourself,” Travers suggested. “He got shot up at Halfway, but he’s mending. The Mako’s aboard, before you ask.”
“And Richard,” Jazinsky said loudly, one finger holding the bug in her ear, “is waiting for us in the crew lounge. What about it, Asako? Decent food, booze that won’t actually rot your liver. If I remember correctly, your fancy is a drop of the Irish.” She handed over the bottle of Velcastran O’Toole’s, and thrust the vodka at Hubler.
“Beware,” Hubler growled, though he took the bottle, “of Pakrani bearing gifts.”
“They’re from Richard,” Jazinsky informed him. “I wouldn’t have thought of it.”
“All right, Frenchmen bearing gifts,” Hubler allowed.
“I thought you gave the savages beads to make ’em friendly,” Rodman said cynically.
“You want beads?” Jazinsky’s pale blue eyes glittered with humor. “I can manage a string of slightly-flawed gelemeralds. They’d never get past the traders, but they sure do shine in the light.”
But Rodman had already twisted the cap off the O’Toole’s and the decade old spirit roughened her voice. “This’ll do.”
“You want to get fed?” Jazinsky wondered. “Like I said, they’re in the crew lounge, wondering why Belczak won’t answer Richard’s calls.”
She stepped into the service lift a pace ahead of them, and the cage was rumbling shut when Hubler said baldly, “They don’t trust him.”
The statement did not surprise Jazinsky, but Travers muttered an oath. Marin had learned enough about Freespacers to accept it with a deep pragmatism. “Everybody out here knows the Wastrel flies under Harrison Shapiro’s contract,” he said reasonably. “They also know it’s rough times, and the whole company of us would be rotting in the Jackson maximum security facility if we’d refused.”
“They know,” Rodman agreed. “Doesn’t make them trust you one iota more.” She gestured with the whiskey bottle. “If Vaurien wants to be trusted again, the way he once was, he’ll have to earn it.”
Marin had known Belczak’s silence would be due to something like this. He lifted a brow at Travers as the lift opened, but said nothing as they strode into the lounge, where the long tables were set for a late, late dinner and the ’chef was stocked with the best the Wastrel could produce. Vaurien, Ingersol and Grant were already seated, while van Donne and his people bickered over the ’chef.
The mercenary looked up and back over one shoulder and his brows arched at Rodman. “Speak of the devil.”
She lifted one finger at him in a very old, rather obscene gesture. “You were talking about me? Nothing complimentary, I assume.”
“Just wondering,” Vaurien said darkly, “if Belczak might answer a call from you, since he won’t answer me. Take a seat, Rodman. What are you eating?”
“Anything that didn’t come out of a can.” She swung out a chair, settled in it, and with a frown watched Hubler make his way to the ’chef. “We’ve been hanging out on the Hong Lung, which isn’t half the size of the Harlequin, doesn’t have the resources or the luxuries. And we’ll be hanging out on that rust-bucket till the Ulrish yards finish up with the Harlequin and let her go.”
“Computer core,” Jazinsky said dutifully.
“And other stuff,” Rodman admitted.
“Like?” Vaurien leaned across the table toward her as Travers and Marin shouldered for space around the ’chef.
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br /> She studied him rudely. “I can get Henri Belczak on the line, but I can’t make him talk to you. I’ll tell you now, and for nothing, he’ll cut the line the second he hears your dulcet voice.” Twin lines appeared between her brows as they knitted. “But I can also get you into the mansion.”
“Mansion?” Travers echoed.
The same curiosity had piqued for Marin, and as he selected a plate of noodles and seafood he gave Asako Rodman an interested look. They had not met in person, but they knew each other by reputation, and they had spoken on comm. He offered his hand as he and Travers sat opposite her, beside Vaurien. “Curtis Marin. This is Neil Travers … and you seem to know an awful lot about Celeste.”
Rodman shook his hand briefly, and Travers’s a moment later. They were all veterans of the battle at Ulrand, which gave them priceless common ground. “I know enough to get myself into trouble,” she said slowly. “I’ve been groundside a half dozen times. Been inside the mansion twice, when I let Belczak know I’m in the market for a better ship than that piece of shit Roark and me are wasting our time on right now. I mean, I own it, bow, keel and stern, but it’s not much more than transport.”
“Not,” Hubler added, plunking into the seat beside her, “the kind of hull you’d take into a fight, or into dangerous space. And then there’s the kind of dumb-ass job Henri Ballsup is trying to push on us, like he expects us to take the Lung into Hellgate, for chrissakes!”
“No he doesn’t,” Marin guessed, “but he does expect to use the lure of good-money jobs to push a ship on you.” He gave Rodman a crooked smile. “Let me guess. He just happens to have this really great vessel he wants to sell to the right buyer.”
A barked laugh escaped Rodman’s throat, a sound like mountains of scrap metal rasping together. “You ought to play poker, kid.”
“Occasionally, I do.” Marin toyed with his food, not really hungry, and met Travers’s eyes. “This could be our way to Belczak. Rodman agrees to let the man sell her a ship, she gets an invite, we tag along.”