by Jamie Sawyer
“Where is the stinking thief of precious things? The big walking stinkhill. Bring him out!”
The weapon jutting from its owner’s baggy sleeves, gripped by stubby, scrawny fingers, was a very old-style energy blaster. At the end of a scratched and worn barrel several beam coherence toroids were grouped right behind the emitter aperture, which was aimed without so much as a tremor at Ancil. No one spoke and that seemed to infuriate the cowled Ongian still further.
“Speak! Reveal the thief to me …”
Dervla saw the bulky shape of Kref loom behind the angry intruder and threw herself towards the nearest bunk as a big meaty hand grabbed the Ongian’s head and slammed it sideways into the metal doorframe. At the same time Moleg had lunged out of the shadows behind him and twisted the blaster out of surprised and unresisting fingers. As the stunned and disarmed Ongian slumped insensibly to the floor, Ancil gave a slow handclap from behind the drum-table.
“What in the name of the Holy Nova have you two been up to?” Dervla said, getting out of the bunk she’d scrambled into. “No, wait—drag our visitor inside and close the door first. I’d rather not have an audience.”
Once the unconscious Ongian was laid out on one of the bunks, Dervla made Kref and Moleg stand side by side in front of the closed door. Moleg, a lean, middle-aged Human, managed to look innocently bemused, a demeanour that Dervla had come to recognise as thoroughly misleading. He was a brain-cyborged Human formerly known as Mojag, a close personal friend of their missing crewmate, Oleg. Mojag-as-was had kept a copy of his friend’s mindmap stored in his brain implant for safekeeping, but violent events less than a year ago had led to the copy of Oleg taking over from a traumatised Mojag. Over time it seemed that the two personas merged, causing he/it/them to adopt the name Moleg. Surprisingly, the real Oleg was stoically amused by the whole situation.
Dervla then turned her attention to Kref the Henkayan. Broad-shouldered, barrel-chested and wearing an anxious expression, he couldn’t have looked more guilty if he had been carrying a sign saying “I done it!” in big rainbow letters.
“Okay,” Dervla began. “What was it he said, again?—‘Where is the stinking thief … the big walking stinkhill’?” She gave Kref a narrow-eyed look. “Got something to tell me? I mean, I’m assuming that he runs a stall at the market and you lifted an item that belonged to him.”
“And got yourself noticed,” said Ancil. “Amateur.”
Kref frowned angrily. “That’s ’cos I couldn’t hide under the next stall the way you did yesterday!”
Dervla turned to regard a suddenly nervous Ancil. “Yesterday? Is this what you’ve been up to when you go outside, pilfering and pillaging your way through the local traders?”
“Ah, now, Derv, you’re blowing this up out of all proportion—”
“Really?” she said, pointing at the unconscious figure on the bunk. “Is that why he came here, looking for this pair o’ glunters? Did he think to himself, ‘Well, now, I’ve been robbed, plundered and otherwise burglarised so what I really need to do is forget about it and go home’—or—‘I’m going to find out where these bandits are holed up, then march in there waving a bloody gun around!’”
“Please, Derv …”
“… bloody unbelievable—cannot leave you alone for …”
“It’s not all their fault,” Moleg said. “After all, I was the one who made the wager.”
Dervla glared at him. “Wager?”
“The day after we arrived, while we were at the market for supplies, I bet Ancil an Ongian quarter-brass that he couldn’t lift an edible from the pastry stall, but then he counter-bet me a half-brass that I couldn’t do it.” Moleg shrugged. “He lost that one.”
If looks could kill, she thought, I’d be a serial killer by now!
“Okay, then,” she said, struggling to stay calm. “Here’s a wager for you—I bet my left tit that we’ve got less than eight hours before Mr. Stallowner’s nearest and dearest start wondering where he is. Messages will be sent, questions will be asked, and at some point someone will remember how he rushed away after a honking great Henkayan who made off with his goods. Oh, and I also bet that the city council of Cawl-Vesh will demonstrate their disapproval of lawbreaking offworlders in the traditional manner—shackling us to rocks down in the canyon and leaving us for the sand-machine swarms to devour!” She smiled coldly. “Any takers?”
The three culprits began pointing at each other while calling out the others for mistakes, stupid mistakes and just stupidity, all in voices that rose steadily in both volume and anger. Then Kref said something sarcastic about Ancil, and Ancil came back with an insult in Henkayan that had Kref lunging at him and Dervla diving in to try to pull them apart while adding her own voice to the clamour. She managed to wrap both arms around one of Kref’s big, rough hands, which kept it away from Ancil. The other hand, however, was doing a pretty good job by itself and Ancil’s pasty face was turning red as the Henkayan tightened his grip on his neck. For a moment Dervla thought that she would have to free one hand so she could draw her weapon and shoot Kref—then suddenly Moleg was in among them, hauling himself up till he was face-to-face with the big crewman, whereupon he yelled something in what might have been Henkayan.
The change was dramatic. Kref’s eyes widened as if in shock and he reeled backwards. Released from that colossal grip, Ancil slumped to the floor, wheezing and coughing. Immediately Moleg crouched down beside him, as if to check his condition.
“I heard it above all the bellowing,” Moleg said. He appeared to be rifling through Ancil’s pockets. “Just needed to break up the tussle, so that worked.”
“What was it that you said to … wait, heard what?”
Dervla paused when Moleg’s hand came up, holding the bulky handset that was giving off a repetitive warbling sound.
Everything changed. She could feel their eyes on her as she carefully took the handset, thumbed the connect and calmly said, “Yes, Oleg, what can I do for yeh?”
“Hello, darlin,’ it’s your captain speaking!”
“Well, now, isn’t it nice of ye to drop by,” she said, mouthing “Pyke” to the others. “We were starting to wonder if you’d hired another crew or joined the circus or the like. Are you planetside or aboard the Scarabus?”
She asked the question as naturally as she could, and saw her own jittery nerves reflected in the expressions of the others.
“Neither. I got dropped off in the vicinity by a pass-through freighter and I’m in a grubby junker of an autoshuttle so I’ll be a few hours yet. Sorry I got delayed—ran into some unexpected obstacles along the way, but I got round them and took possession of the DNA we need. Everything okay with you?”
Dervla frowned for a second, then glanced at Kref, Ancil and Moleg and their generally dishevelled appearance.
“We’re all fine and dandy down here,” she said. “Couldn’t be better. We’ll have all the equipment prepped and ready when you get here.”
“No need to wait,” Pyke said. “Going by my timer it’ll be sundown where you are in less than two hours, so stick to the plan and head out to the objective then. I’ll meet up with all of ye in the tower staging room not long after and before you know it we’ll get some thieving done!”
“You sure you can find the place?”
“Van Graes gave me a locationer just like yours before he sent me off after the DNA.” There was a pause. “So, are we set, then?”
“Sure, no problem, see you at the tower.”
“I’ll be there. Luck to ye.”
The channel went dead. Still frowning, Dervla thumbed off the receiver, squatted on a rickety stool and scratched her ear, deep in thought.
“So the chief hasn’t landed on Ong yet,” said Moleg. “And he’s …”
“Meeting us at the staging room, yes.” She regarded them. “I want us packed and ready to go soon as possible—oh, assuming that the three of you can get over yer blame-rage spat.”
There were sheepish looks,
nods, mumbled apologies, even handshakes.
“Good,” Dervla said with a dubious tone. “Right, Kref—weapons and body armour.”
“Checked and ready, Derv,” the Henkayan said, jerking his thumb at a large backpack sitting in the corner.
“Ancil?”
“Got all my probes and sensors tuned and charged,” Ancil said hoarsely. “Van Graes’ briefing file says that the outer vault has a sonic modulation lock so I’ve been over the lockpicking procedure again and again, back on the ship and since we arrived, too. Shouldn’t be a problem, Derv.”
“But you’ve only been practising it in simulation,” she said. “I need to know that you can cope with the real thing.”
Ancil cleared his throat and winced a little. “When I come face-to-face with the vault, I’ll be using a resonance cracker to dig out the keynote sequence. In all the practice run-throughs I’ve had the cracker itself hooked into the sim, and my hands have been working directly with the device itself. My fingers know every part of it back to front and upside down by now.”
“In that case every one of your fingers had better be a safe-cracking genius in its own right,” Dervla said. “Moleg, transport and all the other equipment—can they be ready at short notice?”
“That was part of the deal that Van Graes arranged in advance,” Moleg said. “All the wall-and-door cutters and counter-detection gear we asked for should be stowed in the airboat when we get to the jetty.”
Dervla nodded. Their patron, the secretive and stupendously rich Augustine Van Graes, had turned out to be well informed about the planet Ong and suitably well connected with members of Cawl-Vesh’s underworld. It was just unfortunate that even the smartest plan couldn’t allow for operator error.
“This is all well and good,” she said. “It’s great to see that the three of you have got all your ducks in a row. Shame about the Ongian trader that you’ve taken prisoner.” She went over to the bunk and regarded the slight form lying there. “He’s an Izlak, right? Or is he a Sedlu?”
“Izlak,” said Moleg. “The others are the ruling Grajul and their Pekyr underlings.”
The Izlak were the most numerous, being similar to the dog-like Gomedrans, only shorter, scrawnier. The Sedlu were squat, brawny humanoids, while the Pekyr were tall and wiry with oddly small heads. Most of the Pekyr worked as guards and enforcers for the ruling houses of the Grajul, the fourth and most recent of the settler species.
Kref stared down at the motionless Ongian. “We gotta take care of him,” he said in deep, gravelly tones. Then he caught Dervla giving him a wordless look, and added, “… without hurting him, obviously.”
“Whatever you do,” Dervla said, “you’ll first have to cope with the fact that the little fellow is starting to come round.”
Sure enough, the scrawny Izlak was stirring on the bunk. Ancil snapped his fingers. “I’ve got sleepgas capsules in my kit … and I’ve got a plan!”
“As long as it doesn’t involve betting,” Dervla said, “I’ll give it a listen.”
It turned out to be not a bad plan. The sleepgas capsule was thankfully effective, putting the Ongian back under almost at the very moment that his eyes started to open. Ancil’s plan to then keep him safe and out of sight just needed a little fine-tuning. Like sneaking him into the next-door building and leaving him bundled up in a blanket inside a storage closet, rather than carrying him into a wharfside bar and abandoning him at a table in the darkest corner. When Ancil and Moleg finally appeared at the slummy, triangular jetty down near the base of the dorm-block they’d called home for four days, it was nearly an hour since Pyke’s call. And although Moleg had alerted their transport contact back then as well, thus far the airboat was a no-show, which had Moleg frowning as he came over to Dervla. She was not best pleased.
“Derv, I’m really sorry,” he said. “The boatman promised me …”
“I hope you have a backup plan,” she said. “Otherwise this job is going to turn into a full-scale fail.”
“I did speak to another boatman,” Moleg said. “He was charging more than Narok but wouldn’t guarantee the kind of readiness that we need. I can see if I can get him to come along, but we’d still have to chase down the other to get our equipment—”
Dervla felt as if there were some countervailing force trying to stymie their efforts, a feeling she’d had ever since arriving on Ong. But she blanked out these thoughts while pulling the handset from an inner pocket.
“Make the call,” she said.
But before Moleg could punch in the local codes, Ancil caught their attention.
“Hang on—there’s a boat coming!” he said, pointing down.
Dervla and Moleg went to the rail and peered over. An ungainly looking airboat with a raised stern and brightly coloured awning had emerged from beneath the adjacent building and was ascending to the jetty.
“That’s Narok,” Moleg said, waving down at a figure standing in the prow, who waved back.
“I hope he has a good excuse,” said Dervla.
The airboat looked as if it had been built over a century ago, had a rough working life before being buried in a sand dune, got dug up years later and pressed back into service without much of a cleanup. Not a square inch of its hull and superstructure seemed free from scratches, abrasions, dents or riveted patches. The humming repulsors, two at the prow, two at the stern, were probably the vessel’s newest important components—they were mounted in curved recesses clearly designed for much larger, older units, yet still they managed to look beaten up and scavenged.
Its captain, Narok, was a squat, block-headed Sedlu garbed in a thick-woven, high-collared coat that Dervla was sure had to be far too warm for this weather. Once the craft was level with the jetty, he flung out a gangway and urgently waved them aboard. Moments later, the gangway was hauled back in and the airboat was descending, guided by Narok as he conversed rapidly with Moleg. As the Ongian spoke, Moleg nodded, then glanced at Dervla and beckoned her over.
“Narok tells me that he had to get here by a roundabout route due to the Whipguards making surprise checks at the main undercity boatway junctions. Rumour has it that an offworld gang of crims recently landed near the city, intent on plundering the ancient tombs of Vesh.” Moleg glanced back at the boat’s captain. “Narok knows it can’t be us since we’ve been here several days, but he is understandably jittery.”
“Do what you can to keep him relaxed,” Dervla said. “Tell him a joke if you have to … Mind you, I’ve no idea what makes an Ongian laugh so maybe scratch that one.”
“He knows that we’re planning to steal something expensive from the Grajul,” Moleg said. “It gives him considerable satisfaction to know this.”
“Nice,” she said. “A bit o’ sympathy for high-end thievery, that’s what I like to hear!”
Soon they were gliding through what the locals called Cellartown, the mazy, shadowy underside of Cawl-Vesh. It was like an inverted city—well, a slummy, rickety, handbuilt city full of noises, smells and music, and the people who were making them. The web of immense cables that supported the city in its entirety was visible here and there, in the gaps between all the pendant and appended frameworks, shacks, shanties and sheds that had been augmented over time, like the encrusted hull of some great ship. Of course, new arrivals built extensions or rebuilt what was there, adding curious arches, balconies, walkways and any number of camouflaged features. Cellartown as a result was riddled with wynds, alleys, secret wharfs and concealed conduits.
While striving to avoid patrols of Whipguards, the boatman Narok treated them to a brief sidetrip along one of the conduits. Gliding down one alley, the boat ascended to an odd recess beneath an overhang crammed with pipes and power ducts; ahead, the alley cornered to the right but Narok maintained speed and direction towards a brick wall. At the last moment a section of grubby brickwork slid aside and Narok guided them through, without any fuss. Ancil and Kref muttered and chortled at one another as the airboat floated on into a da
rkened, lamplit passageway. They passed by a small market where baggy-sleeved locals pored over trays of odd produce beneath hanging lanterns; next to that was a cluster of little workshops, each a glowing islet of tools with a lens-wearing artisan at its heart. One looked up as the boat drifted peacefully by, and purely by chance his gaze met Dervla’s—he gave an embarrassed smile and ducked his head. Another artisan looked up, only he offered a challenging glower that made Dervla chuckle quietly and turn away.
Then, just ahead, a short stretch of the passageway floor parted, admitting a flood of amber evening light into the claustrophobic darkness. Narok slowed his craft and smoothly descended through the opening, re-entering Cellartown in all its scruffy, dusk-tinged splendour. Dervla found herself flashing on some old pix she once saw on some history feed or other, views from an old Earth city called Venice, a coastal city where manually propelled boats travelled around a network of canals. Except that instead of dark and murky waters, vertigo-inducing emptiness gaped beneath the airboat, more than half a kilometre of hot dusty air between the underbelly of Cawl-Vesh and the rocky sands of the canyon floor, supposedly infested with swarms of feralised bots.
Peering over the side, Dervla studied the canyon, the blue-green outcrops of stone, the patches and stretches of shining pure gold sands, and the curtain of deep shadow cast right across it all by the setting sun. A beautiful vista that also managed to look barren and lifeless.
Then Moleg was by her side. “We’re almost there—Narok says just a minute or two before we reach the shaft entrance.”
The airboat was rising again, ascending a high, narrow alley as if heading for one of the balcony jetties jutting out here and there. But they soared steadily past them. Dervla knew from Van Graes’ locationer, and the sketchy maps Moleg had managed to source, that by now they had to be very near to the under-sub-basement of the Tower of the Jul-Tegach. The Jul-Tegach were one of Cawl-Vesh’s ruling Grajul families, one forced by financial troubles to commercialise some of its assets, including entire levels of its dynastic seat. Several floors were currently lying conveniently empty, including one that, by virtue of its extravagant design, projected outward in such a way that its east side sat quite close to the outer wall of the adjacent building, the Grand Halls of Council, the municipal governing heart of the city. Two levels of chambers and galleries in the west wing of the Great Halls had been given over to a museum, the Exquisite Parade of Mysteries, the lower level of which all but jostled against the extravagantly appointed eighth floor next door.