Though Hell Should Bar the Way - eARC

by David Drake

  The boatman cut the drive when we were fifty feet short of the nearer outrigger on a parallel line. We closed on momentum; then the boatman switched to reverse. Our bow dipped, but only momentarily. The lighter’s side swung against the outrigger with a clang that could’ve waked the dead, but our speed was so slight that we didn’t even rebound.

  Abram hopped onto the outrigger and looped the hawser around one of the struts. When he tossed the free end back, I hitched it to a cleat on the lighter’s side.

  The small hatch into the cabin started to open. I turned to Platt and said, “Stand up—you’re on now. Tell him we’re boarding for an inspection.”

  The consul stood up shakily. “Ahmed, it’s your master!” he called. “We’re coming aboard!”

  Lal stood in the hatchway. “Welcome, Captain Roy,” he said. “I’ve just been having a drink with my friend Ahmed. Do you want to board by the way of the strut or should I lower the main hatch?”

  “We’ve got a load of stores,” Abram said. “Lower the hatch and you come help us get it aboard, too.”

  The cabin hatch was an airlock and not ordinarily used while a ship was on a planet. A spacer could easily mount the forward strut which attached the outrigger to the hull. The struts were extended now but would draw in close when the ship reached orbit. When fully lowered, the main hatch became a ramp resting on the port outrigger and giving general access to the ship.

  I wasn’t sure Monica could board by the strut, so I’d have asked Lal to lower the main hatch anyway. But I was frowning as I looked at Abram and said, “What supplies?”

  Bolts released. The hatch began squealing down slowly.

  “That,” Abram said, nodding toward cargo amidships. “Look, I talked more to Lal. The watchman’d sold every bloody thing he could get hold of. You’d have been eating your boots till you got to the next landfall, and those”—he glanced down at my feet and grinned—“are plastic, right?”

  “Synthetic, yeah,” I said, “but—look, Abram, what’d all this cost?”

  “Not a bloody thing so far as you’re concerned!” he said.

  “I meant that money for you!” I said.

  “Well, then, I spent it on what I wanted, didn’t I?” Abram said. “Look, how much do you think my family eats? Or what d’ye think there is to buy in the hills?”

  The hatch, now a ramp, clanged onto the outrigger. I squeezed Abram’s shoulder and looked away from him. “All right,” I said. “Platt, get aboard, go into the cabin. Monica, go with him.”

  “You said you’d let me go,” the consul said in a wobbly voice.

  “You’ll go back with the lighter!” I said. “But I’m getting you out of my way for now.”

  Platt turned and began trudging up the ramp. Monica looked sharply at me before following. I gave her my pistol, butt first. I was going to need both my hands for shifting the stores.

  CHAPTER 25

  The boatmen—they may have been two brothers, both of about forty—helped us unload the lighter. When I made my first trip up the ramp carrying a case of dehydrated food—it had been manufactured on Pleasaunce, almost certainly from the stores of a ship captured by pirates—I got my first view of the interior of the Alfraz. I hadn’t expected much, but it was worse than that.

  A replacement fusion bottle had been placed in the hold in a corner with the bulkhead separating the cabin from the hold. It was a large unit, probably out of a major warship. A freighter’s Power Room wouldn’t have been able to hold it, so a dockyard had dispensed with the usual containment bulkheads and just put the bottle where it would fit.

  Heavy conduits ran from the bottle in several directions. One of them entered the cabin through a U-shaped cut in the pressure hatch from the hold. The hole had been packed with some gummy material which I hoped was air tight. In theory the cargo hold should hold an atmosphere so long as the main hatch was closed, but there was always leakage on older ships. I was afraid that on the Alfraz there would be a lot of leakage.

  I set my load down and clamped it with one of the hold’s internal tie-downs. Half of them were missing, but because they were part of the ship’s fabric the watchman hadn’t sold them, the way he apparently had everything loose.

  I said to Abram, coming in with a similar load, “I’m going to check the console.” I walked into the cabin.

  The bunks in two stacks, three and three, stood on either side of the communicating hatch. They were slotted metal sheets, four of them still folded against the bulkhead. Their padding was gone.

  A local man, presumably the watchman, lay on his back on one, snoring. Platt sat on the other lowered bunk looking frightened and uncomfortable. Monica had rotated the console’s seat so that she could keep the pistol aimed at Platt’s belly.

  “I need to check the controls,” I said. Monica got up without speaking and stood against the starboard bulkhead. Her eyes and the gun muzzle remained fixed on Platt.

  The console came up promptly. The holographic display had good definition, much better than that of the Martinique. Like the fusion bottle, it had been salvaged from a naval vessel.

  I checked the read-outs. The bottle was running in the green, which was a blessing because I was pretty sure that Lal wasn’t a competent tech. Neither was I, but I was probably up to the average of engineers in this region of the galaxy.

  The reaction mass tanks were very low. There was no excuse for that, since the ship floated in a bay which could have topped them off in a few hours. I didn’t have time to take care of it now, but it would be my first priority on our next landing.

  I checked the astrogation data. There was full information with way points for a run back to Karst, but except for that it was spotty. Planets had only cursory legends—Air, Water—or none at all. I hadn’t expected much, but again reality was at least as bad as I’d feared.

  I started the internal pumps to circulate reaction mass to the propulsion system, the plasma thrusters and the antimatter converters which fed the High Drive motors. The system worked to eighty percent of original specifications, which was quite good. If the drive units were in comparable shape, we’d be all right.

  “We’ll lift as soon as we finish loading,” I explained to Monica as I left the cabin. She nodded but didn’t speak.

  It took a full half hour for the five of us to empty the lighter. I didn’t even consider asking Ahmed to help. Even if he hadn’t been drunk he was too frail to add much to the process.

  We got the job done, though. I went into the cabin to get Ahmed. “We’re just about done,” I said to Monica.

  I bent to pick up the watchman, since he obviously wasn’t up to leaving on his own. I suddenly had another thought. “Platt,” I said. “Where’s your purse?”

  “You’re going to rob me now?” he snapped.

  “Don’t push your luck,” I said. I lifted his tunic and opened the belt purse I found under it. It was heavy, but there were only twenty-two Karst sequins and about a hundred piasters in local coins. I put the sequins in my own purse and transferred the piasters to Ahmed’s; it was the only way he was going to collect any of his back pay.

  “Up you go, buddy,” I said to the watchman, lifting him with his right arm over my shoulders. I used my right hand to keep his face turned away from me in case he vomited.

  As we shuffled off the ship, I called over my shoulder, “As soon as we’ve got him aboard, you can let Platt go too.”

  Lal and Abram were in the hold. Both came to help me with the watchman, but Abram got to him first. The boatmen had gone back to their vessel; the stern was starting to swing away from the Alfraz’s outrigger because they’d loosed the aft mooring line.

  “Thanks,” I said across the lolling drunk between us. “I put some money in his purse. Can he shelter in a hut down here?”

  “I’ll fix it,” Abram said. “He’ll probably get robbed, but the sun’ll probably rise in the east too.”

  We laid the watchman in the lighter with his head lifted slightly on the tar
paulin that had covered the stores.

  “Abram,” I said as I straightened. “If you’re ever in a place that I can help you, let me know. I’ve owed you from the first day I arrived on ben Yusuf.”

  He looked away. “Yeah, well,” he said. “You treated me square.”

  He looked up again and met my eyes. “You trusted me, boss. Nobody ever trusted me before.”

  “Then they’re fools,” I said. I don’t know what I might’ve said next, but the shots inside the ship stopped me.

  There were two—Whack! Whack! They were louder but not as sharp as a pistol usually sounds. With the second shot I heard the slug ricocheting off the steel bulkheads.

  “Prepare to cast off!” I shouted to Abram as I sprinted up the ramp. I didn’t want Abram to be caught in this, whatever the hell had happened.

  Lal was at the internal hatchway, looking into the cabin. I brushed past him and ran inside.

  Monica stood, holding the pistol. The heated barrel glowed slightly and the vaporized aluminum driving bands shimmered above the weapon.

  Platt quivered facedown on the deck. There was a splash of blood on the bulkhead behind where he’d been sitting. I didn’t know where the first slug had gone until I rolled the body over; it had broken his shoulder but hadn’t penetrated the bone. His eyes were open, but glazing.

  I looked up at Monica. “What happened?” I said.

  She thrust the pistol at me muzzle first. Her face was wild. “Take it!” she said. “Take it!”

  I did, if only to get it out of Monica’s hands. I grabbed it by the receiver, but I managed to touch the hot tip of the barrel to the inside of my wrist. I shouted and jerked away. I was lucky not to fling the weapon into the overhead.

  “What happened?” I repeated as I took the pistol by the grip and put it on Safe. I was working to sound calm, both for Monica’s sake and my own.

  “He smiled at me,” she said.

  Her voice was clear, but I thought I must’ve misunderstood. “What?”

  “When he thought he was going to be released…” she said, swallowing. “He smiled. Just the way he did before he raped me. I shot him; I didn’t know I was going to shoot him.”

  She swallowed again and said, “Then I shot him again.”

  “Well, no loss,” I said, though my stomach was roiling. That was partly the smell; Platt’s bowels had released when he died.

  I walked back into the hold and stood in the hatchway. The lighter still floated alongside, though Abram held the bow hawser in both hands.

  “Everything’s fine!” I called. “Platt’s going off with us. Don’t forget to let the driver go from the car trunk, all right?”

  I returned to the cabin and set the main hatch closing. Over the squeal I said, “Prepare for lift-off, both of you. Monica, we’ve got cushions and bedding in the hold. See if you can get that struck down while Lal and I are busy.”

  The external sensors had terrible optics, but the lighter was big enough that I could follow its wake to the dark, shapeless blob of the vessel itself. It was far enough out that I figured it was safe to light our thrusters at low output.

  I wished there was somebody in the Power Room, but I suspect the Alfraz had operated without an engineer for her whole active life. “Lighting One and Six,” I said.

  The PA speaker in the cabin had so much distortion that I couldn’t have understood the words myself. The one in the hold seemed a little clearer, though I couldn’t be sure over the interference from the nearer unit.

  The thrusters lighted properly. Feed pressure didn’t drop.

  I shut down the first pair and said, “Lighting Two and Five.”

  The second pair ran smoothly also. I hadn’t been able to check them externally, but the instruments seemed happy.

  When I heard the hatch close, I turned and shouted to Lal, “Get the body into the hold. We’ll dump him when we enter the Matrix!”

  I pointed and made arm gestures to show him what I wanted. Lal hesitated at the order, which I didn’t blame him for. Worst case I’d take care of Platt myself when we reached orbit, but I’d really have liked to get rid of the smell and also the lump in the corner of my eye.

  Monica got up from where she was attaching the cushions to the bunks. She grabbed Platt by the wrists and dragged him toward the hatch. When she got there, Lal came and lifted the body by the ankles until they had it over the coaming. They dumped it in the hold and together pulled the connecting hatch to.

  I shut down Two and Five, then called, “Lighting Three and Four!”

  As I ran up the middle pair of thrusters, I switched my short-wave transmitter to twenty meters and called, “Karst Transport Alfraz to Salaam control. We are preparing for immediate lift-off.”

  There was no response, as I’d expected. Lal was on the striker’s seat; Monica lay down on a bunk—not the one beneath the splash of the consul’s blood on the bulkhead. That was probably the best choice for lift-off, though I doubted whether the Alfraz could accelerate hard enough to worry about.

  As my last act as a resident of ben Yusuf, I opened a link to the palace console. I’d set it up two days ago, when I’d begun to firm up my plan for escape. Through it I locked out the antiship batteries on the jaws of the harbor. They would continue to function normally—except that they wouldn’t accept a launch signal.

  It would be easy to reverse my program edit—as soon as somebody noticed it. I was pretty sure that would be long after the Alfraz had left the region of ben Yusuf. It was likely enough that the crews would never realize that their batteries weren’t functional. That was pretty much the norm for governmental departments in Salaam.

  “Lighting all thrusters!” I said. With all six venting plasma into the harbor, the Alfraz rocked and pitched. Mostly that was the water boiling under our outriggers, because with the nozzles flared the thrusters provided very little impulse.

  “Lifting in five seconds!” I said. I was shouting, but I doubt my companions could hear me. It was what they must have expected though, even Monica.

  I ran the thrusters up to full output, checked briefly that there were no instrument anomalies, and said, “Lifting off!” I sphinctered the thruster leaves to minimum.

  We rose more smoothly than I’d feared. The Alfraz was taking on a list to port, but that was alignment; output on all six thrusters was within a two percent range, but either port or starboard was misaligned. They were all supposed to be set at ninety degrees.

  I adjusted the port set five degrees inward, choosing by guess. I was ready to reverse the controls if we started toward a roll, but in fact the hull shifted properly upright. The maneuver had been dangerous—we’d probably have reached orbit if I’d done nothing—but because the thruster output was marginal for our weight I’d been sure that I’d have enough time to correct the mistake if I’d guessed wrong.

  We’d reached the upper levels of ben Yusuf’s atmosphere. “Switching to High Drive,” I said and cut them in. The Alfraz had only four motors, so our acceleration until we inserted into the Matrix would be painfully slight, but beggars can’t be choosers.

  The High Drive made a nasty buzz as matter and antimatter recombined. This was a much more efficient way to accelerate us, but it got on my nerves the way the steady roaring of the thrusters did not.

  I began calculating a course as the ship drove outward. There was no reason to pause in orbit; we all wanted to be away from ben Yusuf, and straight out was as efficient a method as there was.

  Monica unstrapped herself from her bunk and walked over to the console. Our acceleration was below 1.5 gs, so it wasn’t a remarkable feat. It must’ve been work, though.

  “We’re off ben Yusuf, aren’t we?” she shouted in my ear.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Twenty miles above the surface is the legal definition, and we’re above all but traces of atmosphere.”

  I looked at her. “We’re a long way short of getting where we want to go, though,” I said.

  “Where I wanted to go
was off that horrible planet,” Monica said. Then she kissed me.

  Monica went back to the bunk. It took me a while to get back to my course calculations, but eventually I did.

  * * *

  I hadn’t had time to check the suit locker. When I thought of it I was momentarily dizzy with fear. If the watchman had been able to get into it, he would’ve sold the suits as he had everything else.

  My only choice then would’ve been to land at another harbor on ben Yusuf and purchase at least one suit there—hoping that the news from Salaam wouldn’t arrive before I’d been able to do that. That was unlikely, since I’d have to earn money for the suit. I didn’t have a clue as to how to do that.

  I grinned. Perhaps Lal and I could rob a pirate cutter. If it had been Abram with me, I might’ve thought I had a chance.

  The suit locker was secure storage, opened by the console. That was common on freighters on the fringes. Weapons and liquor would be similarly secured, though the Alfraz carried neither.

  I opened the locker and stood. “Let’s go take a look,” I shouted to Lal, but Monica joined us as well.

  I breathed out in relief as I saw suits. I was glad to have anything, though the reality wasn’t great. The only hard suit was missing the left lower leg. The four air suits had all their limbs, but I could see gaps at the joints of one when I manipulated them.

  I could have repaired that well enough for the purpose with a roll of cargo tape, the sturdy material designed to keep cargo from shifting in the hold under sideways acceleration. Unfortunately, any cargo tape aboard the Alfraz had been sold for Ahmed’s upkeep.

  “Well, I figure two of them will work,” I said to Lal, hoping that I sounded cheerful. “That’s an advantage of being short-crewed, right?”

  “And perhaps the rigging won’t need much help,” Lal said, showing that he was trying to keep up spirits as well.

  Our sensors didn’t show any other ship above ben Yusuf. I didn’t trust the Alfraz’s electronics, but I hoped they were good enough to warn me at least if there were another ship closing with ours.