Pelquin's Comet (20 page)

Everyone seemed terrified of her, and once she began to discover her body’s capabilities she couldn’t really blame them. Nor could she take issue with the way the farmer and his wife had discharged their duties. She was still alive, after all.

They left her to her own devices for the most part, to wallow in her angst, her confusion and her despair. She had left soon after waking and getting her bearings. She needed answers that clearly weren’t to be found on the farm, and so had set out for the ‘big city’: La Gossa, travelling cross country and by back roads, avoiding people where she could and stealing food when necessary.

This was a dark, dark period. She’d been frightened, confused, and angry; most of all angry. Somewhere between the farm and La Gossa she had killed someone, in circumstances that still weren’t entirely clear. In retrospect, she hadn’t been entirely sane during that period, but she remembered hands on her body, more than one man’s – two, perhaps three of them. Vagrants, she thought; an attempted rape – a young woman travelling alone along a quiet road. There’d been a knife, and at one point her arms had been pinned behind her back, though not for long. She’d broken his neck, she thought; could remember her hands clasping his throat, fingers digging into the tendons while the other hand reached up to fasten onto the side of his head. She shied away from examining what happened after that, and tried to avoid thinking about the incident at all. Not with complete success.

Somehow, she made it to La Gossa. If anyone had helped her along the way she failed to remember them. All she knew was that this was where the space port waited. If she truly had come from off world, La Gossa was the place to start looking. She had a vague hope of finding some record of how she had arrived here, aboard which ship; anything that would give her some clue. No such records existed, it transpired.

La Gossa was intended to be the first step on her journey, but the city proved to be quite an education. Looking back, she’d been lucky to survive those early, fear-driven, memory-blinded days in the capital, relying on her wits and augmented abilities to get by. She had already learned by then to hide the latter.

In La Gossa she fell in with the wrong people and allowed herself to become distracted. She had immersed herself in the city’s seedy underbelly, which enabled her to lose herself, to put off the need to uncover whatever dark secrets her past might conceal.

She shuddered at the memory of that so-recent past, of the lifestyle she’d spiralled into. Not that she regretted the drugs and the fun, or even the sex – well, not the majority of it – but that whole period had been nothing more than wilful evasion of her responsibilities to herself.

If asked, she would have denied ever being a prostitute, but there had been a
lot
of sex, and if money was on offer, well, how could a girl refuse?

Leesa looked up as somebody entered the galley, glad of the distraction. Anna, the pilot; not that the
Comet
needed much piloting as far as Leesa could see, but that was how the ebony-skinned woman had introduced herself. Dazzling smile. Leesa was reminded for an instant of another dark-skinned beauty back on Babylon, but suppressed the recollection.

“Hiya, sleep okay?” Anna asked.

“Fine,” Leesa lied. She was still getting used to life on board ship and felt a little wary of how the established crew might react to her, but Anna’s greeting seemed warm enough.

“Hear you’ve got the engines running better than ever,” Anna said, as she poured herself a coffee, programmed some breakfast and then dropped into a seat opposite Leesa. “Thanks.”

The ‘thanks’ likewise sounded genuine, without any obvious guile or sarcasm. “It’s nothing,” Leesa said, unused to compliments and feeling as awkward as she doubtless sounded.

Anna’s breakfast duly arrived. Scrambled eggs, dotted with flakes of something that might have been crisped bacon. Anna ate it daintily though with little attention, while asking Leesa about life on Babylon, questions which she danced around with banalities and half-truths while trying not to sound evasive. She liked Anna.

Eggs finished and plate recycled, Anna stretched and lifted first one bare foot and then the other to rest on an empty seat, flexing her toes.
Nice legs
, Leesa couldn’t help but notice.

“We’re due to make planet fall early tomorrow,” Anna said, which was news to Leesa. “Can’t say I’m sorry. There’s nothing much for me to do out here once the course has been laid in, except stare at the monitor screens. Which reminds me, I haven’t said good morning to them yet.” She dropped both feet to the floor and stood up.

The comment puzzled Leesa. “Wouldn’t an alarm have sounded if there was any kind of a problem?”

“Oh, sure, but I always like to check in person first thing. Wouldn’t want the controls to get lonely now, would we? I’ll be back in a bit.”

With that Anna bounced from the room with the sort of carefree vigour that Leesa could only envy. No sooner had she left than Drake entered. Leesa froze, but the banker merely smiled and said, “Morning.”

Even when he had his back to her, the brown saucer-like eyes of his genpet stared at Leesa from the creature’s perch near the man’s shoulders. She did her best not to squirm, while reckoning that in one respect mornings on the
Comet
were much the same as mornings everywhere: they started out greyly and went downhill from there.

During the night things had become a little clearer for Drake, but not as much as he’d hoped; the possibilities hadn’t yet narrowed down to a single irrefutable certainty. He did, however, now know where the Elder cache had to be located and why the captain was being so coy on the subject, but even that realisation opened the door to more questions than it answered. He needed more information, which meant it was time for a bit of deliberate agitation to stimulate a response.

He chose his moment carefully, waiting until there was nobody else in obvious earshot before stopping the captain and asking, with studied casualness, “Just from curiosity, when do you intend telling the crew that you’re taking us all into Xter space?”

Pelquin stared at him for a startled second but recovered quickly, asking, “What makes you think I am?”

“A number of things. To start with, there’s your continued refusal to disclose our destination.”

Pelquin waved a dismissive hand. “A precaution. I wouldn’t want anyone getting drunk in some portside tavern and letting slip something they shouldn’t. Once we’re on the final leg of the journey, I’ll make everything clear enough.”

Final leg? So we’re stopping off somewhere else?
“Then, of course, there’s the equipment we took on at Babylon. Some of it is replacement for what was damaged in the attack, granted, but by no means all of it.”

Pelquin tutted. “Mr Drake, I do believe you’ve been snooping again.”

“I prefer to think of it as keeping an eye on things, Captain; which, after all,
is
what my employer pays me to do.”

“All right then, so what exactly
did
we take on that has so aroused your suspicions?

“A Ptarmigan; a dissonance field generator.”

Pelquin feigned a puzzled frown. “A what?”

“A device that supposedly works by putting an object marginally out of synch with the rest of the universe, making anything within the field it generates very difficult to find. A cloaking system, if you will.”

“Really? I wonder how that got to be there.”

“With a great deal of planning, I would imagine. That’s military grade tech, supposedly classified; a system that isn’t legally available and could only be obtained in a haven of knock-off enterprise such as Babylon. Even then, it’s not the sort of thing you can just walk up and buy on spec. It would have to be ordered well in advance.”

“Would it indeed? My, my, Drake, you’re a positive mine of information today.”

Drake smiled without any hint of humour. “Massaging the estimates presented to First Solar to include enough slack for such an expensive piece of equipment must have taken some doing. I applaud your enterprise.”

Pelquin scratched his chin, keeping up the charade. “So, let’s assume for the moment that you’re right. What if I
did
commission a cloaking system? Doesn’t mean we’re headed into Xter space. There are a lot of people itching to get their hands on what we know. You’ve seen first-hand how far they’re willing to go. I don’t want us being followed. I’m just being cautious, that’s all.”

Drake shook his head. “No you’re not, and we both know it.”

Pelquin shrugged. “Have it your own way.”

“You’re going to have to tell the crew at some point, Captain. I’d recommend doing so sooner rather than later.”

“Thank you. Your advice is duly noted.”

“You do realise that I can’t condone an illegal incursion into Xter space, don’t you?”

“Trust me, Mr Drake, you won’t have to. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” With that, Pelquin continued on his way.

That went well
, Mudball commented.
Anyone else on board you’d care to antagonise? Not that there are too many left to choose from.

Mudball…

Yes?

Shut up.

Will do.

Drake didn’t really believe that the captain was stupid enough to blithely fly into Xter space without a stratagem; which meant that he was missing something, and it irritated the hell out of him that he couldn’t figure out what.

Everybody bar Anna and the captain spent the morning in the hold, unpacking the equipment that had come aboard at New Sparta and Babylon.

Nate and Bren were doing most of the heavy work, of which there was plenty despite the presence of a compact but solid powerlifter with its claw-like crane functions, easy-lift netting, and forklift appendages. The doc was largely peripheral, as he tended to be in most things. He was there and he contributed, helping when instructed, but he was rarely proactive.

“Feel free to muck in anytime you want to,” Bren said at one point, looking across to where Drake stood and watched.

“No chance,” Nate said immediately. “You don’t really think he’s going to risk getting his precious suit dirty, do you?”

Drake refused to be baited and declined the invite to help, though not without a twinge of guilt. That changed when a crate was knocked by the powerlifter and began to topple towards Leesa, who was squatting down examining an already unpacked item and oblivious to the danger. Drake was there immediately to half hold and half steady the tottering carton.

“Thanks,” Bren said, stepping in to join him. Between them they managed to manoeuvre the heavy container back into position. Leesa glanced up, stared at him blankly, and then went back to work without saying a word. Once he was there, with his hands dirtied, it seemed churlish to step back and simply observe again, so Drake took off his jacket, setting it neatly aside and ensuring Mudball was sitting comfortably on top of its folds.

Aren’t you afraid I’ll go running off and causing trouble?

Behave.

If you insist.

Drake then rolled up his sleeves and joined in the unloading, contributing at least as much as the doc did. In fact, that worthy seemed to take the banker’s arrival as an excuse to do even less, smiling at Drake as if he were an ally come specifically to relieve him of this burdensome chore.

“My, my,” Nate commented on seeing Drake beside him. “Wonders will never cease.”

Drake reckoned that if this was the worst Almont was going to throw at him then he was doing okay.

The biggest crate of all sat firmly in the centre of the floor with the other crates surrounding it. Nate levered the front open and it moved as one piece, hitting the floor like a felled tree, to reveal what waited within. Bren let out a whistle of appreciation.

A haulage buggy. Drake knew the type – a broad, flat-backed vehicle designed to handle rough terrain. Two sets of big wheels with fat tyres that were almost impossible to puncture and could be automatically pumped up with extra pressure when the buggy was loaded. Predictive suspension ensured a smooth ride for fragile cargo–dedicated sensors monitored the ground in minute detail and enabled each wheel to react to conditions a fraction before they were reached rather than a fraction after – while a powerful engine meant that the buggy could really shift when empty and haul an impressive amount when loaded. All in all, a handy vehicle to be taking on a cache hunt.

“I’ll bet these beauties don’t come cheap,” Bren said, stepping inside to run an appreciative hand over the fender.

“They don’t,” Nate confirmed, “which is one of the reasons we have to put up with our grey-suited friend’s company.”

Even Leesa put aside what she’d been doing to come and stare as Bren and Nate pulled away protective packaging material to reveal the buggy more clearly. It was a bizarre contraption, little more than a rimmed platform with an open two-seater driver’s cabin at the front and multi-spindled wheel braces and axles projecting from the four corners, but that didn’t seem to bother Bren.

“Bags I get to drive it,” she said,

“Not likely,” Nate replied. “That’ll be Anna’s job, while you get your hands dirty with the rest of us fetching and loading things onto it.”

Although there were still a few crates to unpack, including the one housing the dissonance field generator – a fact that Drake suspected was far from coincidental – the unveiling of the buggy signalled an end to the morning’s work. Nate disappeared to report to Pelquin, Leesa went off frowning to run some tests on the pumping system of one of the big drills, which evidently she wasn’t happy with, and the doc used the departure of those two as an excuse to make his own. Bren lingered, sitting down on the steps leading to the rest of the ship and staring wistfully at the buggy, which still sat in its crate, facing outward like a dog in a kennel.

“Are you all right?” Drake asked her.

“Yeah, fine. I was just thinking.”

“About Monkey?”