Shooting the Rift - eARC (12 page)

“I’m not sure, exactly,” I said, truthfully enough, although I was pretty sure I could narrow it down to one of two possible locations. As it was, though, I was spared the potential embarrassment of interrupting his consultation with the chief engineer by the clatter of boot soles on the metal stairway, followed almost at once by the skipper himself. To my pleased surprise Clio was at his elbow, and favored me with a slightly perfunctory nod of greeting.

“All done, are we?” Remington asked cheerfully, and Plubek nodded.

“I believe so, Captain. Everything seems to be in order, although some items in your manifest appear to be unaccounted for. I suggest you adjust it accordingly.” The manifest appeared in the datasphere, the items he’d pilfered highlighted.

“Bloody shipping clerks.” Remington shook his head ruefully, pretending to believe the bare-faced lie, and not fooling anyone for a second. “Thank you for your diligence.”

“And you for your co-operation.” The formal words were delivered politely by both, but I’d heard enough superficially civil conversations in Avalonian society to pick up on the mutual antipathy at once.

“Miss Rennau will see you back to the airlock,” Remington said.

Clio stepped forward on cue, and nodded to Plubek. “This way.”

She turned, and began to lead the way up the stairs without a backward glance, although I had no doubt that the Inspector had seen the inside of enough standard freighters to be able to find his own way back without any trouble at all. The real reason for the apparent courtesy was that Remington didn’t trust the man anywhere out of the eyeline of at least one of his crew, and with good reason so far as I could see.

“That went well,” Remington said, without much detectable sarcasm, as Plubek disappeared from view. Then he turned to me, his face stern. “Remember what I said about you playing silly buggers with the node on my ship?”

“Yes, skipper.” The words forced themselves past a sudden constriction in my throat. It seemed whatever Remington had been up to with Sowerby, clearly not the conclusion I’d jumped to, it hadn’t taken his attention off the
Stacked Deck
’s datanode. The sudden inrush of data I’d purloined would have been instantly noticeable to anyone meshing in at an oversight level—which, it belatedly occurred to me, would be precisely what a captain and his chief engineer would have been doing if they were plotting vectors and power consumption for our optimum approach to Numarkut.

Remington nodded soberly. “Good. I have to tell you I’ve been thinking very hard since you came aboard about whether or not to offer you that apprenticeship, or just dump you as soon as we hit dirtside. But it looks as though you’ve just made the decision for me.”

“Guess it does,” I said, feeling all my hopes curdle yet again. Another chance squandered by Simon the screw-up. At least I was consistent, although that was scant consolation at the moment.

Remington slapped me on the back. “God alone knows how you got away with it, but that stuff you siphoned off is pure gold. Can you do it again?”

“I guess so,” I said. Now I’d got the trick of it, I should be able to access pretty much any handheld I came across, if the owner wasn’t paying sufficient attention. “But if you’re putting me off the ship—”

“Off the ship?” Remington was looking at me as though I’d just announced I was taking holy orders and looking forward to a lifetime of celibacy. “Why the hell would I throw away an edge like that? I know what’s moving in and out system, how much Plubek’s skimming from his supervisor’s cut, and which brokers are most desperate for liquidity. All thanks to you.” He drew a guild patch, with its hand and galaxy emblem, from his pocket, and handed it to me; I must confess I was so surprised I took it automatically, without any conscious volition. “Get that sewn on when you have a moment.”

“Right. Yes. I will.” Part of my mind warned me I was beginning to babble, but the rest of it didn’t care. “Thanks, skipper. Really. You won’t regret this, I promise.”

“If I do, you’ll regret it a damn sight more than me.
I
promise.” Remington grinned, with what looked like honest amusement. “Now go and find something useful to do.”

“Useful. Right. I had a broom somewhere . . .” I started up the staircase, feeling his eyes on my back the whole way.

I was an apprentice. Officially a member of the Commerce Guild, at least from the moment Remington logged my induction. But I was under no illusion as to why. He thought I’d be useful, but he’d never really trust me—men like Remington have secrets of their own, and keeping someone close who excelled at uncovering other people’s would feel like carrying an unsheathed blade around in his pocket, never quite sure when it would cut his own hand. He’d be watching my every move from now on, and that was going to make my commission from Aunt Jenny even more difficult than it already was.

CHAPTER TWELVE

In which Clio and I decline the offer of a lift.

“How are you planning to celebrate?” Clio asked, as we passed through one of the cargo hatches, and I felt drizzle on my face for the first time in what seemed like forever. Numarkut didn’t have much of an orbital infrastructure, which I found slightly odd for such a major trade hub—but apparently the locals didn’t like the idea of cargoes being transshipped without hitting dirt first, in case any enterprising merchant crews (in other words, all of them) started cutting private deals instead of going through the local brokers.

“I thought we already had.” I pulled my hat a little further down over my face, and raised a farewell hand to Rennau, who was lounging just inside the open cargo hatch, scowling at the low-lying clouds wreathing the aptly-named Dullingham Downs. As far as the eye could see, landing cradles rose from barren heathland and gently rolling hills, interspersed with soggy scrub and bracken. Almost unconsciously, my hand rose to brush a few droplets of moisture from the crisp new Guild patch on my jacket.

“That was just welcoming you aboard,” Clio said, narrowing her eyes against the drizzle. The news of my freshly minted apprenticeship had got round the crew as rapidly as you might expect, and one drink had led to another, to the point where I’d started to envy Plubek his tweak; especially if it conferred immunity to hangovers. “Let’s find a bar and celebrate properly.”

“Just the two of us?” I asked. That didn’t sound like much of a party to me, but at least it would be quieter.

“If you like,” Clio said, in a casual tone that sounded faintly forced. fIf I'd heard it in Carenza's voice, or any Avalonian gentlewoman's for that matter, I'd have jumped to the conclusion that she had a lot more than just a quiet drink in mind. But Clio was a Guilder, and played by a different set of rules. Better to remain non-committal, at least for now; if she hadn't been making a pass after all, responding as though she had could lead to all kinds of problems. She raised a hand to her father. "See you later, Dad. I’m just going to show Simon the sights.”

And that was another thing. The second most senior man aboard wasn't that keen on me either - a situation offending, or starting a relationship with, his daughter wouldn't exactly help to improve.

“Right.” Rennau transferred his scowl from the weather to me. “Mind you watch your step.”

“I’ll be fine,” I assured him. “I’ve got Clio with me.”

“Exactly.” For some reason that failed to reassure him, although I was sure I’d be perfectly all right with her as a guide. He nodded to Rolf and Lena, who were heading out arm in arm; both grimaced as the damp air met their faces, and Rolf emitted something which, in a higher register, might have been a squeal of disconcerted surprise.

“How do dirtwalkers manage to live in an environment you can’t heat up and dry out?” he asked, with a glance in my direction.

Unsure whether the question was rhetorical or not, I just shrugged. “You get used to it.”

“I’ll take your word for that.” He sounded unconvinced, and looked on the point of turning back, until his wife tugged gently on his upper arm, with enough force to bend a girder.

“It’s called ‘weather.’ If you ever left the ship, you’d find out about it.” She steered him firmly onto the rain-slick metal platform surrounding the equator of the
Stacked Deck
, and it suddenly occured to me that I could see the exterior of our ship for the first time. With a parting nod to Rennau, I hurried after the couple, Clio trotting at my heels.

“They do that every time we hit dirt,” Clio said, bumping into me as I stopped suddenly, looking up at the vast, curving bulk of the
Stacked Deck
. She glanced at me, and shrugged. “I guess that sort of thing’s bound to happen when shipborns and dirtwalkers hook up. But it works for them.”

“They seem very well suited,” I agreed absently, my attention still on the exterior of the ship. It was as featureless as I’d expected, the bare metalwork as smooth and unblemished as it had been the day it came out of the shipyard moulds in a system somewhere I’d never even heard of. The equatorial hatches were all level with the platform which surrounded the docking cradle, although the only one open was the one we’d just left by, and which Rennau seemed determined to guard until Remington returned. Not that I could see the point myself—no one was likely to come calling now the formalities were over, and Sowerby’s engineering crew weren’t going anywhere until all the systems were powered down, checked thoroughly, and walloped with the right sized wrench, so it wasn’t as if the ship was exactly being left unattended.

Anyhow, with the skipper away dealing with the Harbormaster, and arranging for the cargo to be discharged, the rest of us had nothing much to do; which meant everyone who could was heading into the town I’d been reliably informed was lurking somewhere in the distance, where the moorland met the lowering sky.

“Do you want a ride?” Lena asked, from the back of an open cargo sled hovering by the edge of the loading platform, the only vehicle for hire which could possibly have accommodated her and her husband. I considered it for a moment, then shook my head. Clio and I would have been jammed in to whatever space the two of them had left, which would hardly be comfortable at the best of times, and the light rain showed no sign of easing off.

“Already called a cab, thanks,” I lied, pinging in a request as I spoke. With a cheerful wave, the couple peeled away, and joined the steady stream of sleds and cargo haulers weaving between the forest of cradles like vast metallic insects in search of ferrous nectar.

“Good call,” Clio said, apparently sanguine about the prospect of having to wait a few minutes in the wet for our ride to arrive. “Much more fun drinking when your ribs haven’t been cracked.”

I indicated the open hatch behind us, from which Rennau continued to glower. “We can go back inside, if you like.”

“I’m okay.” She tilted her head slightly, to let the rain fall full on her face, as if taking a shower. The thought sparked some mental images I pushed firmly to the corner of my mind, for later appreciation, feeling faintly uncomfortable as I did so. I'd already decided my position was precarious enough without adding any further complications to it, and nibbling away at that resolve wasn't exactly going to help. Besides, I couldn't be entirely sure I wasn't misreading the signals I thought she was giving off. “I like the way the weather just does what it wants.” She smiled. “The first time I ever felt wind, I was about nine months old. I thought there was a hull breach, and screamed the place down.”

“You can remember that?” I asked, faintly surprised.

“No, of course not.” She directed the smile at me. “But it’s one of Dad’s favorite ‘embarrass your daughter’ stories. Especially if he’s talking to a boy I like.”

“Are there many of those?” I asked, without thinking, most of my attention still on the arrivals and departures going on around us. From here I could see about thirty cradles, roughly two thirds of them occupied; as I watched, a ship broke free of its girderwork nest and fell upwards, disappearing through the cloud layer in a matter of moments, while another couple drifted over the harbor like bright metal soap bubbles, descending slowly towards their assigned berths.

“A few.” Clio seemed disconcerted by the question. “But you know how it is in the Guild. Here today, gone tomorrow. None of them really lasted.”

“Lucky you,” I said, and her eyes narrowed. “My mother hoarded embarrassing stories about me. Which she trotted out at every opportunity. They lasted a lot longer than I’d have liked.”

Her face cleared. “No, I meant . . . Never mind.” She pointed at a fast-moving sled, peeling off from the traffic lane to head in our direction, apparently happy to change the subject. “Is that our ride?”

“It is,” I confirmed, after meshing briefly with the onboard processor. It seemed manual piloting was prohibited in the docking area, which, considering the number of ships, vehicles and drones in the air, seemed more than sensible. It wasn’t much to look at, a basic utility model, sprayed gray beneath the grime, but at least it was enclosed. It drifted into the platform, and popped the passenger door on the side facing us. “Where to?”

“Let me.” Clio scrambled in, already meshing with the AI, feeding it a destination as she settled herself on the padded bench seat in the rear. I followed, a little more carefully.

“Seems like you know the city well,” I said, as the door closed, sealing us in with the smell of wet hair and damp clothing.

“About as well as I know anywhere dirtside,” she agreed. “You can’t do much trade in this part of the Sphere without passing through Numarkut a lot.”

“I guess not,” I agreed. The rifts would see to that, funneling trade through the nexus they created there; an economic advantage which guaranteed the system’s independence, as well as its prosperity. I knew the Commonwealth had made innumerable diplomatic overtures over the last few centuries, attempting to convince the authorities there to abandon its neutrality and join us, just as the League, and probably a few other local powers, had too: but the Numarkuteers had steadfastly resisted all blandishments. And who could blame them? Why become a client state, and watch the bulk of their wealth drain down the nearest rift?

Of course some states were more belligerent than others, but Numarkut was as safe from invasion as it was possible to be: not from the size of its Navy, which was essentially non-existent (customs cutters like Plubek’s were about as close to a warship as the system possessed), but from the size of everyone else’s. Numarkut was too important to the economies of all the regional powers for any of them to stand idly by while one of their neighbors attempted to seize it, and anyone foolish enough to try would be on the wrong end of the gun ports of every other state in the vicinity. Even the League or the Commonwealth would be hopelessly outgunned by such an alliance, let alone the small fry. So, despite the envy of everyone surrounding them, Numarkut sat comfortably at the center of the local rift network, getting steadily richer and more corrupt, to the great satisfaction of its citizens.

“Hang on,” Clio warned, as the cab lifted away from the cradle. “These things can get a little rough to ride in sometimes.” As if to underline her words, it banked abruptly, and dived for the traffic lane nearest the ground, where most of the passenger vehicles were congregated. With the greater part of my attention still on the novel sight of the
Stacked Deck
’s outer hull, I was taken by surprise, and fell heavily against her. “Oof.”

“Sorry.” I scrambled back to my half of the seat. “I see what you mean.”

“I did warn you.” She grinned, amused at my discomfiture, and regained her own balance with an easy shrug. Maintaining it seemed to involve sitting close enough for our thighs to touch, which I must admit I had no objection to; after half a lifetime of fending off Carenza, and all too many like her, it felt pleasant to be with a woman who seemed to like me for who I was, not just what I looked like.

“Lucky we didn’t take that lift with Rolf and Lena,” I said. She nodded again. “You weren’t really joking about cracking a rib, were you?”

“Not entirely,” Clio agreed, settling back against the upholstery.

The cab continued to slalom its way between the towering cradles, surrounded by traffic, and I found myself glancing up at the starships balanced above us. Somehow they seemed a lot bulkier from this angle, looming over us in a manner I couldn’t help but find vaguely threatening.

“So you should,” Clio agreed, when I spoke the thought aloud. “If the gravitics go off, the cradles would just collapse. We’d be squished like a bug.” Which, I must admit, hadn’t occurred to me, but was kind of obvious when you came to think about it. Starships were big, and correspondingly heavy. Far too much so to be held aloft by an assemblage of girders, however solid they might appear.

“But Sarah’s powering them down,” I said, faintly uneasy. Gravitics were like everything else in everyday usage: reliable enough to be used without thinking, but needing maintenance now and again to stay that way. Of course the
Stacked Deck
wasn’t about to plummet to the ground, but even so, the image was a worrying one.

“Not ours. The cradle’s.” Clio meshed into the cab’s primitive node, nudging the flight instructions. The little sled began to rise, out of the main stream of the traffic, twisting back and forth as it evaded the heavier commercial vehicles in the higher lanes—which threw Clio and me together again, in a fashion I must admit to finding far from unpleasant. She pointed out of the window. “See?”

“Right.” I peered through the murk at the nearest cradle, which was unoccupied, a circle of leaden sky visible through the hole in the loading platform into which a ship would nestle. Ground crew, in garish visibility jackets, were working on platforms and gantries beneath the wide, flat ring, no doubt grateful for the shelter it afforded from the never-ending rain. It was hard to be sure as we swept past, but several of them seemed to be working on gravitic coils embedded in the structure of the tower. “So those units hold the ships in place.”

“That’s right.” Clio nodded, then grinned, in the mischievous fashion with which I was becoming so familiar. “Unless their power fails, of course.”

“Of course.” But that wouldn’t happen. All the port’s power systems would be multiply redundant, to prevent just such a catastrophe from occurring.

Override limits reached. Resuming standard course
, the sled’s AI grumbled, in what could fancifully be taken as an aggrieved tone.

Clio sighed. “Don’t you sometimes wish you could just take manual control? We’d be there in half the time.”

“Say no more.” I don’t honestly know where the impulse to show off came from; but I liked the girl, and I suppose I wanted to impress her. It was trivially easy for me to mesh with the guidance system, penetrate it with my sneakware, and override the flight controls while leaving the simple device convinced it was still following the parameters programmed into it. “What would you like to do?”