Dark Deeds

by Mike Brooks

  “Hmm?”

  “Jia leaving presents us with a problem,” Muradov said, “if you will forgive my understatement. We have somewhere we urgently need to be, and no means of getting there.”

  “Waystations are a good place to hire pilots, so Jia’s done us that favour at least,” Drift said. His mind briefly wandered back to a fateful meeting on the Grand Souk, many years before. “I’ll have to go recruiting and hope I can find someone who isn’t a rank amateur, or just lying about what they can do.”

  The infirmary was near the docking hatch, on the basis that patients might need to be transported from it to a more advanced medical facility with a minimum of delay, so it didn’t take them long to get there. As a result, Drift found himself standing with Muradov, and Kuai’s casket, in awkward silence, trying not to look at his chrono too often but unable to prevent himself from wishing that time would just hurry up so they could get this over with.

  They were joined a few minutes later by Jenna, holding a small money pouch that she handed to Drift, and Apirana, with bags containing both Jia and Kuai’s possessions from their quarters, stacked up on another maglev bed. The big man looked pensive, and Drift got the impression that the arm Apirana placed around Jenna’s shoulders was as much for his own comfort as hers.

  That was good, at least. Even if most of his decisions had been flawed in some way, even if he’d made bad calls at many, many other points, Jenna and Big A were happy together, and they’d never have met each other without him. He had to focus on the positives, such as they were. If he allowed himself to get dragged down by guilt and negativity, then that wouldn’t help anyone. He owed it to his crew—what was left of it—to provide a direction. They could then choose to follow him, or not. He could do nothing more.

  He tried hard to remember that when he felt the slight jolt as the Keiko docked with Stranno Bazar, then heard the cockpit door slide open. Jia’s footsteps echoed for a couple of seconds, then the pilot turned the corner and came to a dead stop.

  She looked a mess. Her face was dirty, her hair was dishevelled, and her flight suit was stained. She had at least changed out of the security blacks she’d been wearing when she came back aboard, but that looked to be about all she’d done since Zhongtu. Drift couldn’t really blame her.

  There were tear tracks down her cheeks from when she’d been crying, but at the moment her eyes were hard and dry, and they focused on Drift.

  “You this fucking eager to get rid of me?”

  “No,” Drift said honestly. “I don’t want to lose you. You’re the best damn pilot I’ve ever met, and you’re my friend. But I figure you brought us here because you want to leave, so . . .” He gestured to the pile of bags and Kuai’s casket. “We tried to make it easy. If you want to go, you can go. No delays. If you want to stay, I’ll be a hell of a lot happier.”

  Jia’s gaze held him for a moment, her face unreadable, then switched to the bags. “That my stuff?”

  “Yours an’ Kuai’s,” Apirana rumbled. “I bagged everything in both your cabins, an’ all his stuff from the engine room, careful like.”

  Jia nodded once, her jaw visibly working. “Right.”

  There was a moment of silence and stillness. Then Jia stepped forward, holding her hand out.

  “Give it here, then.”

  Apirana wordlessly tugged the maglev bed out so Jia could take the handle. She didn’t look at Drift as she did so, and he tried to fight down the hollow feeling in his chest. He’d thought he’d been prepared for this moment, but he’d been wrong.

  “Do you need a hand with anything?” he croaked.

  “Think you’ve done enough, don’t you?” Jia replied flatly, turning away from him. She paused for a second, then reached out, and grabbed Jenna in a one-armed hug. The taller girl froze for a moment in apparent surprise, then hugged her back a trifle awkwardly.

  “Uh, I’ve got your money here. Should help get you home . . .”

  “Take care of yourself, báichī,” Jia muttered, letting go and taking the proffered money pouch, then turning away. She took a deep breath and laid her hand on Kuai’s casket. Drift nodded over her shoulder to Muradov, who activated the air lock.

  “Thanks, Chief,” Jia said quietly. She stepped out into the docking corridor without a backwards glance. Muradov didn’t close the air lock behind her, and so they watched until she got to the far end, where she opened that door as well and stepped out into the flow of foot traffic beyond. She turned left, and the Chang siblings disappeared from Ichabod Drift’s life.

  The far air lock door slid shut, and then it was just the remaining members of the Keiko’s crew.

  “So what now?” Apirana asked heavily.

  Drift exhaled and tried to compose himself. “We keep going. We need a pilot. Chief, with me: Between the two of us, we should be able to find someone who can fly a ship that at least one of us can understand. A, Jenna, see if you can sort the cockpit out so it’s a bit . . . fresher, and more welcoming. If you get what I mean.”

  Apirana nodded. “I getcha.”

  “Good luck, Cap,” Jenna said, squeezing his shoulder.

  Drift didn’t trust himself to answer.

  UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCES

  Rourke woke up to the sound of her alarm, and the light of Rassvet streaming in through her window. She’d left the glass untinted, because she liked the sunrise. Besides, New Samara’s twenty-six-hour daily cycle allowed for a slightly more leisurely routine than on planets or ships that adhered to the twenty-four-hour standard clock humanity had carried with them from Old Earth. She could get to bed late and still sleep for long enough to rise fully rested.

  She’d grown used to operative hours when young, and smuggler hours when older, but that didn’t mean she didn’t enjoy a good sleep when she could catch one.

  A couple of seconds after waking she realised that she had not, in fact, been roused by her alarm. Instead, it was her comm’s call tone. She reached out to the bedside table and plugged it into her ear. She didn’t look at her pad to see who was calling: It was almost certainly Larysa.

  “Hello?”

  +Good morning, Tamara.+

  Rourke felt her eyebrows raise slightly. The voice in her ear was that of Sergei Orlov.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  +How are you finding your new accommodation?+

  Rourke looked around the apartment, which she’d picked herself and moved into only the day before. The furniture was rented, but it was perfectly serviceable. Besides, she could pick up pieces more to her taste in time. For now, it was simply nice to have a place she could call her own. It wasn’t as luxurious as her room at the Grand House had been, and she had to cook her own food, but it was larger, and no one else had a key to the door.

  Well, theoretically. She knew that Orlov’s thugs—or her colleagues, as she now had to think of them—could realistically come through that door whenever they wanted. However, she at least knew that if any of them came to her flat with bad intentions, they would be very, very cautious about it.

  “Very much to my liking, sir. I appreciate you extending me an advance on my wages so I could secure it.”

  +It seemed a worthwhile investment at the time.+

  Rourke stiffened slightly, feeling herself abruptly becoming hyperalert. She eyed the apartment door, then the window. Orlov surely wasn’t fool enough to give her warning before he sent people after her—and why would he do that, anyway?—but there was no mistaking his words. “ ‘At the time,’ sir?”

  +I’ve just received a message from an incoming vessel that I believe you know, Tamara.+

  She sat bolt upright in bed, her stomach jumping. “What?”

  +It simply reads ‘I have your money.’ And it’s signed off by Captain Ichabod Drift.+

  Rourke swallowed, not trusting herself to speak. For two months, she’d walled herself off from this moment. She knew that Ichabod and the others could be ferociously competent, of course, but Orlov had set them what had su
rely been an unattainable target. She didn’t dare think that they would succeed, so she’d taken matters into her own hands. She’d escaped as much as was feasible, she’d approached Orlov on her own terms, and she’d proved her worth. She’d made the best of the hand she’d been dealt, and that had turned out not too badly at all.

  She wasn’t sure what she’d expected from Ichabod and the others. A gutsy, almost-certainly doomed rescue attempt, perhaps? A return, bearing some money and a desperate plea for more time? In the darker moments, when even she had struggled to sleep at night, she’d wondered to herself whether Drift really would leave her to her fate and slink off into the galaxy. Even Sergei Orlov could only reach so far, after all, and a two-month head start would be a trail so cold as to be virtually useless. The crew might have reasoned that they could do nothing for her except to die along with her, and therefore decided to save themselves. As the deadline had grown closer with no sign of her crew, she’d started to accept that this was the most likely outcome. She’d actually already forgiven them for it.

  Of course, that had probably been helped by the fact that she had no longer been facing death. If a band saw to the face were the only thing she’d had to look forward to, then she might have been less charitably inclined. Even the hangover she’d endured the previous morning, after Larysa had finally convinced Rourke and Roman to drink with her in celebration of Rourke officially accepting Orlov’s offer of employment, was probably less painful than that.

  Probably.

  +Tamara?+

  She realised with a start that Orlov was still awaiting her response. She moistened a mouth that had abruptly become dry. “Sorry, sir. That somewhat startled me.”

  +And me. However, I need to know your thoughts on this.+

  She played for time. “Sir?”

  +I made a deal with Captain Drift, Tamara,+ Orlov said, and now his voice carried the slightest tone of impatience. +If his message is to be believed, he has fulfilled his side of the deal. I need to know your intentions.+

  “Sir,” Rourke said evenly as she slid out of bed, “I am now officially your employee. I signed—”

  +I am well aware what you signed,+ Orlov snapped. +I am also well aware, as are you, that you are here because I abducted you and that you felt compelled to offer me your services in light of my threat to unlawfully end your life. Any contracts you may or may not have signed can be held laughably void under those circumstances. Only one thing matters here: the agreement I made with Captain Drift.

  +I am, as I told Captain Drift two months ago, a businessman. I honour my deals. Should you wish to return to his crew, then you are free to do so. The money he will provide me with will more than recompense me for the advance of your wages, and I consider the services you have done for my organisation to have cancelled the debt incurred by your crew’s failure to perform the job for me on Uragan.+

  Rourke found herself consumed, just for a second, by a pure, irrational hatred of the man. Well, hatred might be rational for Sergei Orlov, for many people and for many reasons, but not for this one. She found herself abruptly and violently resenting the fact that he’d given her a choice.

  If Orlov had laughed at his own promises and turned Drift away, that would be one thing. Assuming he hadn’t hurt the Keiko’s crew, Rourke would still have worked for him. She already knew that the man was dangerous and could never be trusted completely: It had always been a case of playing the odds. But this apparently genuine offer? Giving her the chance to turn her back on this new, comparatively stable life she’d just managed to forge for herself, the result of her second major reinvention since leaving the GIA?

  She hated him for it, because she already knew the answer she was going to give him.

  “I will be staying in your employment, sir.” She tried to muster a hint of levity in her tone, but it sounded weak even to her ears. “I think I’m getting a little old for jaunting around the galaxy.”

  There was a brief pause.

  +I am a little surprised, I will admit. But I am also very pleased. I believe that Captain Drift will be landing in approximately two hours. Please be at my apartment in ninety minutes.+

  Rourke froze. “Sir . . .”

  +Yes?+

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Please don’t make me face him. Please don’t let me see his expression. She took a breath and opened her eyes again. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

  +Far wiser than telling Ichabod Drift that his business partner has elected to remain with me, but forbidding him from seeing her. I imagine your former crew have worked very hard to acquire that money, and it’s proof of how highly they value you. Captain Drift would likely think that I had already killed you and would probably seek to return the favour. I cannot guarantee that he could be restrained in a way that would not lead to him being badly hurt.+

  Orlov was right, of course. She could just imagine Ichabod doing something stupid out of friendship, out of loyalty . . . basically out of all the things that she was sacrificing to remain here. But she couldn’t eat friendship, and couldn’t live in loyalty, and she’d been through one too many jobs where all of the crew’s savings had to go on a desperately needed ship part or some other unexpected expense.

  Like her ransom, for example.

  When it came down to it, she was getting old. She was edging towards sixty, no matter what her appearance might suggest, and she wasn’t going to be able to choke inconvenient security guards into unconsciousness forever. Live simply, earn money, save up for a retirement. It wasn’t a grand dream, but it was one that had never quite come to fruition on the Keiko, no matter how carefully she and Ichabod had planned things. And at some point, she was certain, something was going to give. She’d dropped the ball a couple of months ago on Uragan, and only Jenna’s quick thinking had prevented the crew’s long-standing rival Ricardo fucking Moutinho from potentially killing both of them, plus Apirana as well. Rourke had actually collapsed moments after getting back onto the Jonah following that draining, drawn-out run through the war-torn capital city.

  Maybe some of those arguments might persuade Ichabod that she hadn’t lost her mind. With a huge slice of luck, perhaps she would even manage to convince herself that she wasn’t betraying him.

  “I understand, sir,” she said, trying to keep the heaviness she could feel in her heart out of her tone. “I’ll be there.”

  She ended the call and reached for her bodysuit. Old habits died hard, and she supposed she should at least look like herself when she ended her business partnership.

  BLOOD MONEY

  +Captain?+

  Drift’s head snapped up as the unfamiliar tones came over his comm, but it was only Spark. Their new pilot had only been with them for a few days, and he hadn’t yet got used to zir voice.

  “Drift here,” he said, trying to sound as crisp and professional as possible. It wasn’t the kid’s fault that ze’d signed on with a battered crew on their way to pay off a debt, which was, in fact, all Spark knew of their current job. Drift had no idea how good a pilot ze actually was, but at that point, all he’d been interested in seeing was zir licence.

  +We’ve been assigned a bay,+ Spark said. +Should be touching down in just under five minutes.+

  “Roger that,” Drift replied. He looked up at Apirana, who was lurking nearby. “You know what to do?”

  “I know,” Apirana said, although his face was troubled.

  Drift clenched his jaw. “Tell me again.”

  The Māori sighed. “We give you two hours from when you leave the ship. You don’t come back or contact us in two hours, we take off.”

  “Good.” Drift nodded grimly, straightening the jacket of his suit. It was the same one he’d worn to the Grand House originally, and he was wearing it now for the same reason: Without a suitable outfit, he was unlikely to make it past the front door. “Make sure that you do. I don’t want any heroic rescue attempts. Orlov’s either going to deal with me squarely, or he won’t. If he doesn’t, he’ll be ready
for anything you can bring at him.”

  “Gotta tell you, Cap, I’m thinkin’ the Chief kinda wants to take a shot at the bastard anyway,” Apirana said, lowering his voice.

  Drift shrugged, trying and failing to muster some sort of emotion. He felt burned out. “Whatever. He can if he wants. But you and Jenna, at least; promise me you’ll get out of here. Spark seems able to plot a course, and it doesn’t feel like we’re going to crash-land. So ze must know something of what ze’s doing. Take the ships and go make a living with them. Or hell, sell them if you want to,” he added, trying to swallow a lump in his throat at the thought. “It’s not like they’ll be any use to me.”

  “Won’t need to, Cap,” Apirana rumbled, shaking his head.

  “You don’t know that,” Drift said firmly. “But do this for me, yeah? If you sell them, give the big girl a new name before you pass her on.”

  “The Keiko? Sure thing, Cap,” Apirana said with a frown. “But like I said, we won’t need to.”

  “Here’s hoping,” Drift muttered. He slapped the big man on the shoulder. “Okay, get back to the engine room. I’m heading up to the bridge for the last part.”

  “Best of luck, Ichabod,” Apirana said soberly, squeezing Drift’s shoulder in turn. “Go get ’er back for us.” He turned away and headed aft, and Drift climbed the stairs that led up towards the cockpit.

  The door slid aside, and he stepped in, trying to hide a grimace at the unusual sight that met his eyes. Instead of Jia’s straight, dark hair—or often, her hat—the back of his new pilot’s head was shaved so close that he could see zir skin, and the thin dusting of hair that remained was bleached blonde.

  “Captain,” Spark acknowledged, looking over zir shoulder briefly. Ze had starburst tattoos beside each of zir surprisingly large, liquid eyes, and if Drift had to guess, he’d have said that zir ancestors hailed from somewhere in Old Earth’s Middle East.

  “No problems?” he asked, trying to keep his voice normal.

  “A-OK, sir,” ze replied, turning back to zir instruments. “Smooth system they’ve got here; it’s almost like port control knows what they’re doing.”