by Mike Brooks
“And your business partner, Miss Rourke,” Orlov continued, glancing to Drift’s left. Drift followed his gaze and saw a second container the same size as his being cracked open. The lid was pulled aside by another of Orlov’s men while his colleague reached in for the container’s occupant.
It had long ago been theorised by a physicist whose name Drift couldn’t remember that a cat in a box could either be alive or dead, and you couldn’t know for certain until you opened the box, or something similar. He’d heard that the theory had later been amended by a popular author to “alive, dead, or bloody furious.”
It turned out that, in this case, what was true for cats was also true for Tamara Rourke.
Drift watched in astonishment as two dark-skinned hands reached up with a thin, glittering strand wound between them—Rourke’s garotting wire, sewn into one sleeve of her bodysuit—and hooked it around the back of the stooping thug’s neck. He was pulled down face-first into the edge of the container before he could react, and rebounded off to collapse backwards onto the floor. His colleague threw the lid aside and fumbled at his belt for his gun, but Rourke sprang up and pivoted on one arm to send both her legs around in a scything motion that cut the thug’s out from underneath him. She ended up in a crouch outside the container, collar still in place around her neck but the hood cut away, presumably by the short, thin knife she now held to the second thug’s neck from behind as she wrenched his gun from its holster and raised it in the direction of Sergei Orlov.
Two goons jumped between Rourke and their boss, while Drift suddenly felt the gun barrels belonging to the pair holding him upright pressed against his head from different angles. He tried to struggle free, but only managed a vague spasm. Rourke’s eyes flashed to him, then back towards Orlov.
“Ms.,” she spat at the crime lord.
Orlov’s face, which a moment ago had been a picture of shock, resolved into an expression of consternation. Drift had never found out Tamara Rourke’s exact age, but she had to be over forty and was possibly older than that. She was short and slight and wore her pure black hair cropped close to her skull, and even in one of her bodysuits she still looked like a boy in his early teens. And yet she’d just taken out two of Orlov’s thugs without even breathing heavily, after presumably being stuck in a crate for seventeen and a half hours.
“What?” Orlov asked, apparently unable to believe his ears.
“Ms.,” Rourke repeated levelly. “If you’re going to kidnap and incarcerate me, at least have the decency to give me the correct damn honorific.”
“Ms. Rourke,” Orlov said, perhaps a little tightly, “put the gun down or your business partner gets two holes in his skull.”
More like four, Drift thought manically, both bullets will leave entry and exit wounds, assuming my head doesn’t just get blown apart. . . .
Rourke snorted. “The only reason you’re not dead right now is because Ichabod isn’t.”
“Do you really think that you can fight your way out of here?” Orlov demanded.
“Are you one hundred percent sure that I can’t?”
Orlov tilted his head sideways slightly, as though conceding a point. “I must confess, I am impressed. You are supposed to be in the same state as the good captain here.”
“I keep telling him he should try yoga,” Rourke said dryly. At that moment the man she’d pulled down into the crate pushed himself up onto his knees, clutching at his face. Drift couldn’t see his expression from behind, but the sulphurous cursing the thug let rip with as he reached for his own firearm made his feelings towards Rourke fairly clear, nonetheless.
He cut off and froze abruptly as she calmly brought her stolen pistol across to point at his head.
“Manners.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Orlov exhaled in apparent exasperation and spoke clearly in English. “Gentlemen, if Ms. Rourke places her gun on the ground and releases Alex in the next five seconds, then do not harm her or Captain Drift further. If she does not, shoot her and then send the Captain face-first into the band saw. Then get the rest of their crew and do the same to them.” He shot a glare at Rourke. “Even if she manages to kill me in the meantime.”
Rourke pursed her lips. Drift could practically see her doing the math of combat in her head. He honestly wasn’t sure what conclusion he wanted her to come to. He didn’t want to be left to the mercies of Sergei Orlov, of course, but he really didn’t want to be sent face-first into a band saw.
His eye’s chrono display suggested four seconds had passed before Rourke sighed and lowered her captured pistol, then slid it across the floor to come to rest at the feet of the thugs standing guard on Orlov. She then stood up and stepped back from the man apparently called Alex in one smooth motion, allowing him to fall backwards onto the floor with nothing but the faintest of scratches on his throat from where her knife had nicked him. The man she’d been holding the gun on relaxed from his frozen crouch to sit back in relief.
Sergei Orlov picked the discarded weapon up from the floor and shot both of the thugs Rourke had taken out, one after the other. It was Rourke’s turn to look surprised.
“I do not take kindly to failure,” Orlov said matter-of-factly, while Drift tried to process what he’d just seen. “Especially not from those I charge with guarding me. Expectations of your condition should not have prevented Alex and Yegor from doing their jobs. It is, however, my place to deal with such failings, not yours.” He whistled a shrill, pure note, and more thugs stepped out from behind machinery, all aiming their guns at Rourke. “You made a wise decision.”
“Lucky me,” Rourke muttered. Drift wasn’t feeling particularly optimistic himself: If Orlov was prepared to shoot two of his own employees for failing him, what chance did a freelance crew have?
“Captain,” Orlov said, turning to address Drift for the first time since Rourke had made her startling appearance. “I hired you to do a job for me. You agreed of your own free will. I, at least, was dealing in good faith, but instead of bringing me the information I requested, you instead left the system altogether.” He clasped his hands in front of his chest, steepling his index fingers and tapping them together. “I hope you can understand my disappointment.”
Drift figured that this was where he should start to contribute to the conversation, but his mouth wouldn’t form sounds. He tried to moisten it, to little avail. Orlov watched him expectantly for a few long seconds, then sighed and gestured. One of his men stepped forward with a flask that he unstoppered and held to Drift’s mouth.
It was water, and it was stale, but right now it tasted better to Drift than any twenty-year-aged whiskey. He slurped eagerly, not caring that he was spilling some down his chin, but the thug still withdrew the flask too soon for his liking.
“A revolution tends to make things trickier,” he rasped, when it became clear that no more fluid was forthcoming for now. He was still shaking, but he started to feel a bit more human almost immediately.
“I have no doubt,” Orlov acknowledged, “but I was hoping to have hired a resourceful crew that could cope with such pressures. It appears I overestimated your ingenuity.”
Drift grimaced. The job had seemed simple, but their entire crew had been arrested on charges fabricated out of spite by one of Drift’s old smuggling rivals who’d happened to be there on illegal business of his own, and then a revolution had kicked off that had required all their efforts merely to survive. Sometimes the galaxy really was not on your side.
“Okay,” he said, trying to marshall his thoughts. “You’re a businessman. If you wanted us dead, we’d have been dead where your men found us on Medusa II. You brought us here like you did to make a point, and believe me—” He coughed, swallowed, coughed again. “Your point was well-made. So that all begs the question: What can my crew do for you?”
“I am indeed a businessman,” Orlov agreed. “I am, as it happens, a very rich businessman who will not shy away from spending money if it will assist in a necessary o
bject lesson. Such as what happens to those who accept a contract from me and do not fulfil it.”
Drift prided himself on his ability to talk his way out of pretty much any sort of trouble, but he was tired, weak, and still rather dehydrated. His well of words had pretty much run dry.
“Oh, come on,” he managed, his voice little more than a whine even to his own ears. “The revolution meant those shipments never took off. The information would have been worthless anyway!”
“You were not hired to make that decision!” Orlov snapped, stepping close to him. Drift was taller than the gangster, but he wasn’t exactly drawn up to his full height at present, and so Orlov’s nose was level with his. He tried to sway backwards, but he was held in place.
“You were hired to do a job. Had you brought the information back to me, I would have paid you the agreed fee, even if the information had proved useless,” Orlov said, his voice tight and cold and deadly. “I am a businessman, and businessmen do not become successful by breaking deals. But due to the nature of business I am involved in, I have a certain reputation to maintain when people run out on a contract.”
That didn’t sound good. With reason failing him, Drift fell back on bribery. “How about we recompense you financially? We have an account here that—”
“The account we spoke about when I hired you? The account belonging to Nicolas Kelsier, the terrorist whom you tricked the Europan government into helping you bring down?” Orlov asked. “Captain, please. I would have seized those assets myself, had someone not beaten me to it.”
Drift blinked, his hastily constructed plan already disappearing from under him. “Er, what?”
“I thought you might mention this,” Orlov continued, pulling out a datapad. “I have access to the security feeds from the bank in question. Someone entered the branch the day after you left for Uragan. You may have had the access codes, enough to draw money out bit by bit, but this person had full authority—enough to close the account and transfer the balance to a universal credit chip, it seems.”
He turned the pad so that Drift could see the screen. “Here. A friend of yours?”
Drift watched someone wearing a niqab approach a counter and tap instructions into the terminal, then provide a palm-and-retina scan before taking the simple plastic slip that was dispensed in response. That was a universal credit chip, a piece of plastic that was allegedly unsliceable and that undoubtedly meant that the lucrative account he’d been counting on to help buy their way free of Orlov was now emptier than a politician’s promise.
“I wouldn’t say she was a friend,” he replied weakly. One black niqab looked much like another, of course, but he was fairly sure who was underneath that particular piece of clothing: Sibaal, the woman who’d seemed to be acting as Nicolas Kelsier’s second-in-command. He’d hoped she’d been picked up by the Europans, but it appeared they must have missed her.
This day was just getting worse and worse.
“So tell me, Captain,” Orlov said. “How will you repay me?”
“Offhand? I don’t know,” Drift admitted, taking refuge in what he hoped was disarming honesty. “But I’m an ingenious sort of guy. Give me a bit of time to discuss things with my crew when I’ve had some rest and I can stand up on my own, and I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”
Orlov just looked at him for a few seconds, then broke out into what seemed to Drift to be a genuine chuckle. “Captain, I must confess, you are good at this. Being held upright, barely able to speak and stinking of your own urine, and you can still sound convincing with a bit of fast talking. I almost like you. But where would I be if I allowed men who had failed me to just walk away?”
He tapped one finger on his lips as though considering, then smiled. “I have it! You and your crew may go. My men piloted your ship back here: I will take your ship and shuttle as recompense for your failure to honour our contract.”
Drift felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”
“You do not like this offer?” Orlov frowned. “You get to walk free, alive and in one piece.”
“And marooned here,” Rourke put in. Drift couldn’t help but agree. He doubted any of the crew had much money on their person, which ruled out buying passage off New Samara. And even if they did, what then? What sort of employment was available to a starship captain with no ship? No, in a galaxy where freedom depended on your ability to travel and find work, this was no merciful offer.
Orlov gestured to his thugs, who stepped away. Drift wobbled as their support was withdrawn, but found himself just about able to remain upright without them. The fact that he had to consider that something of a triumph was somewhat depressing.
“You do not seem interested in my proposal, Captain,” Orlov mused. “Very well: I withdraw the offer. You have previously shown yourself to be a gambling man. Perhaps I should give you a second chance, but if I do, then the price for failure this time must be high indeed.”
“Go on,” Drift said, feeling his bile rise.
“Tamara Rourke will remain with me,” Orlov said, his head tilted slightly as he studied Drift’s reactions. “You will have . . . let us say two standard months to deliver to me five hundred thousand stars, or an equivalent value in other currency. If you do not do this, I will post a bounty on your head. I will also kill Ms. Rourke slowly and painfully, document it, and send footage to everyone I think you may possibly attempt to deal with in the future. Even if you avoid the bounty hunters, you will starve when your contacts learn how you abandoned your own business partner to me. After all, what will that say about your trustworthiness or loyalty?”
Drift’s throat was tight, and not just because of his returning thirst. “Hold on a second. Tamara is a vital part of my crew. I’ve got a much better chance of getting you your money if—”
“ ‘Vital’?” Orlov frowned. “Perhaps I should keep you instead, then, and leave her to raise the money?”
Drift looked sideways at Rourke, torn by indecision. It wasn’t that he didn’t think they could get the money—of course he did—it was just that . . .
Well, half a million stars was an awful lot of money to raise in two standard months with no current plan.
“Ichabod, don’t be an idiot,” Rourke sighed, and then hesitated. “You’re better at thinking up schemes than I am.”
“Well, you’re better at enacting them.”
“Then I suggest you start improving, fast.” She turned to Orlov. “I accept your terms. So does he.”
Drift blinked. “I—”
Orlov nodded. “I appreciate decisiveness when doing business. Very well.”
“Hold on a—”
Rourke glared at him. “Ichabod, stop wasting time and get moving. I’ll be fine. You’ll make sure of that.”
What else could he do? He allowed himself to be led away from his business partner and the most powerful man in a five-system radius, back towards his crew and his ship, and a very, very tall order.
“Tick, tock, Captain Drift,” Orlov called from behind him. “Tick, tock.”
THE ONE LEFT BEHIND
The slaughterhouse door had just banged shut behind Ichabod and his escort, leaving Tamara Rourke alone. If you could count being in the same room as a dozen thugs, a ruthless gangster, and two cooling corpses as “alone.”
She turned to face Sergei Orlov again, and found him watching her. She raised an eyebrow. “So, what happens now?”
“Now, we talk about your behaviour while you are my guest,” Orlov said. “You will have a room, food, and drink. If you try to escape, you are cancelling my agreement with your captain, and I will proceed as though they had failed to raise the money. Which means you die, and when your crew returns to buy you back from me, they also die.”
Rourke nodded, choosing not to rise to the description of her as property. “At least I know what to expect. Anything else?”
Orlov gestured at her, up and down with one hand. “You remove the suit. Th
e wire is retractable from one of the sleeves, yes? And I suspect the blade in your hand was concealed in it as well. I do not wish to find out what other surprises it may hold.”
“Water reservoir,” Rourke replied, tapping the top of her suit’s collar and pulling out an inch or so of thin, clear pipe. “It’s spread thin, but it’s better than nothing. It recycles and purifies waste water, too.”
“Which would explain why you were not dehydrated after your journey,” Orlov said in understanding. “And I am curious. . . . No cramp?”
“I’m a bit stiff,” Rourke admitted, “but there are ways to keep your muscles relatively limber even when your movement is restricted. Besides, I’m smaller than Ichabod; I’m sure I bounced around more, but I had more room to move.”
Orlov nodded as though it made perfect sense. “You are most resourceful. Lose the knife.”
Rourke tossed it to the floor, where it made a tinkling noise as it struck the concrete. “I don’t think even I could get you with that from here.”
“I prefer not to take chances with my own safety,” Orlov replied, smiling slightly. His smile faded when Rourke snorted. “Is something funny?”
“It’s always funny when someone thinks they’re safe.”
Orlov gestured to his bodyguards, most of whom still had their weapons at least half-trained on her. “I think you are in more danger than I.”
“I could have shot you five minutes ago,” Rourke said flatly, folding her arms. She nodded down at one of the bodies. “You arm the people around you without making sure that they’re good enough to prevent themselves from being disarmed. If you weren’t taking chances with your safety, you wouldn’t have been present when the crates were opened. Hell, you wouldn’t have had us brought here at all.”
Orlov frowned at her, as though she were a puzzle to which he was missing a piece. “You did not shoot me, though, as otherwise Captain Drift would have died. I had the necessary . . . leverage.”