Space Captain Smith (20 page)

Bounty killers were a bad, solitary bunch, and Dreckitt had always preferred to work alone. They were brutal, amoral and fond of doing things like wearing powerful rocket packs, which made them dangerous people to fight alongside – or, more specifically, beneath. The only people Dreckitt had met who were any worse were space pirates, who although less coldly sadistic were annoyingly prone to burst into song.

Only one thing bothered Dreckitt, existential angst aside. Carveth had no history. Six months ago, she simply disappeared off the records. There was no date of birth, no record of employment, no next of kin – nothing, in fact, to prove that she was older than half a year. That smelt of android to Dreckitt, and he was not going to kill one of his own. That lawyer had frightened him. He lit a cigarette. I could get it wrong, he thought. I could mistake a human being for a simulant. I need to be absolutely sure with this one.

That meant that he would have to get close, insinuate himself with her to make sure, use the Hoyt Axton test before moving in for the kill. This was going to take charm as well as firepower. He decided to brush his teeth with toothpaste instead of whisky today.

*

Smith left Carveth to talk with their new friend. If she wanted to be captain, she could deal with all of the captain stuff, which seemed to include communicating with a man who spoke a language of his own invention, badly.

Annoyingly, but predictably, Rhianna had retreated to her room. Smith thought about going to see her and decided that there was no point, as he would only cock things up further. Somehow he needed to start a conversation with her without opening his big stupid mouth. The best bet would be semaphore, he decided bitterly. Suruk was in the hold, standing still, eyes closed. Smith had never worked out quite what he did at these times, whether he was meditating, thinking, or simply resting his brain for later use. Whatever it was, he needed to persuade Suruk to remain out of sight until they had finished their negotiations. If anything was guaranteed to spoil a delicate black-market deal, it was a frog-faced savage with a skull fixation.

As he entered, the alien turned, his tiny eyes opening to squint at Smith.

‘We’re setting down in about half an hour,’ Smith said. Suruk made his croaking sound. ‘Excellent. I shall fetch my weapons.’

‘Um, no. I’d rather you stayed on board.’

‘On board? You do not wish me to leave the ship?’

‘Well, yes. Actually, could you just sit in one of the storage lockers?’

‘I shall not.’

‘Well, could you at least stay out of sight? I mean, it’s not as if there’d be anything to do here. There’re no shops, murder is illegal – I just think you’d get bored.’

Suruk scowled behind his tusks. ‘You would rather I remained in the ship?’

‘Yes.’

‘Huh. Some holiday this is turning into.’

‘You could have plenty of fun here. You could, oh, hunt rats or something.’

‘Very well.’

‘Brilliant. I appreciate this, Suruk. It’s just that the people here are not very open-minded and may get offended by you being here.’

‘All the more reason to open their minds up, with an axe.’

‘I agree – but not this time, eh?’

‘Huh. Very well. I shall not lower the tone. You can do that for yourself,’ he added, turning away and crossing his arms.

‘Don’t be like that,’ said Smith. ‘It’s just for now. I promise when we’ve got the engine back we’ll go and find somewhere primeval for you. Alright?’

‘Primeval
and
brutal?’

‘Absolutely. I promise. Now, could you help me sort the guns out, please?’

Below the
John Pym
, a great iris-lock sat flush with the earth, as if some vast camera were hidden below the rock. As the ship descended, the lock slid open with a harsh scraping noise they could pick out even over the howling wind. The
Pym
sank down into the earth, into a massive tunnel of shining metal, and the iris closed above it. Suddenly the permanent storm was gone. The ship’s engines thrummed, echoing in the tunnel. There were pilot lights on the tunnel walls, rising in the windscreen as they went down.

‘This doesn’t look good,’ Carveth said.

‘The big rifle’s under my bed,’ Smith replied. ‘I’ve put the Maxim cannon in a cargo box, in the hold. If there’s trouble, get back to the ship and we can arm up there.’

‘Right.’

‘Offer these people the guns Andy gave us. If they seem interested, invite them into the hold to have a look at the merchandise. Then at least we’ll be able to talk to them on home ground.’

‘I’m not sure I
can
talk to them,’ Carveth said. The radio crackled. ‘Ho, dudes!’ Neil exclaimed.

‘You’re straight in the pipeline, five by five!’

Carveth grimaced. ‘You see what I mean? Could be Swahili for all I know.’

The ship landed, the legs folding slightly to take its weight. Smith felt the cabin sway a little, compensated by hydraulics, and he saw the place that held the ship: a great round hall walled with stainless steel. Little people moved about in tough working clothes or long coats: technicians, probably. Almost nobody’s eyes were visible: all wore dark glasses. It looked like the foyer of a spy convention.

Smith said, ‘You know what to do?’

‘Yes, I do,’ Carveth replied. She had a service revolver strapped to her hip. ‘I feel nervous, though.’

‘It’s not easy, being the captain,’ Smith replied. ‘It takes skill and talent.’

‘I wish you’d told me earlier. I wish they’d told you, for that matter.’

‘We’ll be watching you. Keep on the side, where the camera can follow you.’ Smith wore the Civiliser he had taken from Corveau in a holster under his arm. ‘I’ll be ready.’

Carveth stood up and Smith took the pilot’s seat. ‘Just in case we have to make a quick escape, this button makes us go up,’ she said. ‘You’ll know when we reach the top.’

‘The bumping sensation will be a clue, I expect.’

‘As will the subsequent plummeting and screaming,’ she added, and she smiled grimly as she walked to the airlock.

‘Let’s go.’

She pressed the button and the door unlocked. The door opened on a joyless, silvery world.

*

Smith spent the next half-hour watching the monitors in the cockpit. Rhianna made tea. Smith was on his fourth cup when Carveth returned. Three people followed. They wore long coats and sunglasses.

Smith leaned in to the intercom. ‘Heads up, chaps, foreigners on the way. Looks like a delegation from the nerd homeworld.’

Rhianna wandered into the control room. ‘They look absurd,’ she said, peering at the monitor. ‘What’s Polly making that signal for?’

‘Ah. She’s telling me I’ve got the outside speakers on. They look like very clever nerds, though,’ he added, loudly, and he flipped the switch. ‘Balls.’

The doorbell made an ugly screeching sound. ‘Best let her in,’ Rhianna said.

‘Right. To your places, everyone! Remember, the charade must be kept up at all times!’

‘You don’t have to shout,’ Rhianna said, and she wandered back into the hold. Smith opened the door. ‘Hello Carveth. Bring back some chaps, did you?’

‘That’s Captain Chainsaw to you! Step back from the door!’

Carveth strode inside, followed by her visitors. ‘Some of the incompetents you get on board, eh?’ she announced.

‘If it wasn’t for my captaining this ship would just drop out of space.’

‘It wouldn’t drop,’ the woman behind her said. ‘It would drift. There’s no gravity in space.’ She peered around, unimpressed. Her black lenses made her look like a gigantic locust, with lipstick. ‘And it’s captaincy.’

A youngish, spotty man followed her. ‘Ho,’ he said, noticing Smith.

‘This is Neil,’ Carveth explained. ‘This is Trinny, and the man at the back is Morris.’

Morris, a tall black man with a bald head, looked around very slowly and declared, ‘Your… ship. It has a certain aura, a sensibility… an odour.’

‘That’ll be him,’ Carveth said, cocking a thumb at Smith. ‘Right then, who wants to buy some lovely guns?’

She strode towards the hold. ‘Tea for me, fizzy soft drink for the delegates,’ she called back at Smith, and he turned and headed for the galley. ‘On the double!’ she added.

Smith made the tea and took it into the hold along with a bottle of some filthy brown cola stuff he found in the bottom of a cupboard. The three visitors stood around the table in the centre of the hold, on which Rhianna and Smith had laid the guns they had taken from Corveau’s men. Carveth and Rhianna stood a little way back, to allow the rebels to examine the merchandise. Suruk was nowhere to be seen, which meant that he was probably creeping up on them all.

‘Ah, there you are,’ Carveth said. ‘Here’s the drinks, gentlemen. Put them down there, Isambard.’

‘Isambard?’ Neil glanced up. ‘That’s your name?’

‘Well, not really,’ Smith replied, remembering that he was a wanted criminal. ‘It’s Isambard… Jones. Sort of a
nom de plume
, except that I don’t write anything.’

‘
Nom de guerre
,’ Trinny said.

‘Right. But not my real name. Which isn’t Isambard either. That’s just made up.’

‘Isambard. I like it. Good handle you’ve got there,’ Neil said.

‘Thanks. I grew it myself.’

‘I meant your name, not your moustache. You know, your handle. What you use when you jack in.’

Smith’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you getting funny with me?’

‘Let’s move on,’ Trinny said. She stood with her hands on hips, feet apart, like a superhero waiting for adulation. Under her shiny coat she wore tight shiny things, as if hit by bin liners in a wind tunnel. ‘This is what you’re selling, then.’

‘Yes,’ said Carveth.

‘I see. They could be better. But they’re not licensed, not tracked. They could be of use to us. The street finds uses for things.’

‘Yet all is traceable in the era of the
zaibatsu
,’ Morris said cryptically. ‘All things become elements in a whole…fragments in ice.’

‘Riiiight,’ said Carveth. ‘Super. Are you lot going to buy these guns or what?’

The three exchanged a glance. It was clear that their sunglasses completely prevented them reading one another’s expressions. ‘We need to confer,’ Trinny said, and they took out mobile phones.

‘Why don’t we leave you to do so?’ Smith said. ‘We’ll have our tea outside.’

‘Who are these idiots?’ Smith whispered as soon as they were in the corridor.

‘They’re not that bad,’ Carveth replied.

‘They’re complete arseheads. And why do they talk like that?’

‘The regime tightly controls all information on technology,’ Rhianna said. ‘Apparently it’s virtually impossible to get hold of any literature written after 1989.’

‘Awesome to the max!’ Neil exclaimed in the hold.

‘Mondo narly!’

‘I see,’ said Smith. ‘Couldn’t we have found anybody else?’

Carveth shrugged. ‘What do you want? These people are anti-government, for one thing. For another, the only other person Andy said was looking for unmarked guns is called Doctor Apocalypse and runs a lobster-enlargement programme from a secret island base.’

‘Fair enough, then. And calm down, Carveth; stop ordering everyone about. Just because you’re captain doesn’t entitle you to behave like an idiot.’

They returned to the hold.

‘–and I got eight on a d.12, and totally passed my saving throw,’ Neil was saying. ‘Whoa – it’s them again.’

‘We have come to a conclusion,’ Trinny announced, folding her shiny arms around her shiny cleavage with a loud squeak of PVC. ‘We think yes. We’ll give you six thousand plus information.’

‘We wanted seven,’ Carveth said. ‘How good’s the information?’

‘Good is… subjective,’ Morris said. ‘In a culture of data, information is not just money… but blood.’

‘Anyone else want to try?’ Carveth said.

‘Nobody comes here unless they have to,’ Trinny replied. ‘You’re not here to trade – you’re here because you need to be. A trader would send a drone, not wet ware. You need something, otherwise you would use the True Reality, not the flesh. And what you need is probably information.’

‘Um,’ Carveth said.

‘So, what do you need to know? Our knowledge is the best in the metaverse. Knowledge is our only true weapon.’

‘And guns,’ Neil said. ‘Loads of guns.’

‘We need computer parts for a ship,’ Smith said.

‘Equipment to power a supralux drive.’

‘Supralux, huh? Figures, if you want to get out of here,’

Trinny replied. She glanced at Morris, struggled to peer through his lenses, and gave up. ‘If it’s black market equipment you want, there’s one person you need to talk to. Well, when I say person, I mean thing.’

‘Thing?’ Carveth said.

‘He’s reliable enough,’ she said. ‘I just wouldn’t trust him too far.’

‘Well, let’s see the cash, before you turn us over to Johnny Alien,’ said Smith.

‘Pipe down, crew!’ Carveth barked. ‘Who gives the orders here? It’s me, by the way. Now, can we see the money, before you turn us over to Johnny Alien?’

Trinny pulled a wad of creased notes out of her coat and tossed it onto the table. ‘Six thousand two hundred. That’s more than these weapons are worth. I’ll call up Lupin and Spandex and have them collect the guns.’

‘So where is this person who can get us the parts?’

Smith said. He would have let Carveth take control, but she was preoccupied counting and smelling the cash.

‘He… exists… elsewhere,’ Morris said. ‘In a place…different to this.’

It occurred to Smith that Morris might not be wise so much as a bit special.

‘We can take you to him,’ Neil said. ‘His name is Ordo.’

It was not easy to land legally on Deuteronomy. Dreckitt’s spacecraft was small, badly-lit and soon very smoky, and he left much of the driving to the autopilot while he sat about in his coat and cleaned the enormous pistol he used for killing humans. Once he was in orbit around Deuteronomy, he submitted his Warrant of Operation to the authorities and waited for a response. The security services of the Republic of Eden were notoriously complex.

The agency responsible for monitoring space traffic was the Department of Internal Liberty and Democracy Operations, which towards its upper end entered the Agency for Securing Security. The Agency for Securing Security was in turn connected to GROIN, the Government of the Republic’s Operational Intelligence Network. The whole arrangement was somewhat incestuous. It took a day before Dreckitt’s warrant was processed. He was sitting slumped in his chair, smoking a cigarette and raising a glass of cheap whisky to his lips, when the terminal began to beep. Startled, he opened his mouth, dropped his cigarette into his drink, and burned his eyebrows off. He had been granted clearance. In theory, the agencies of the Republic were supposed to monitor the influx of spies, terrorists and other subversives, then reduce their numbers by arresting them. In practice, the agencies increased the number of spies and so on by arresting large numbers of unusuallooking people and beating them until they confessed to being such. After this beating, the suspects, who if not unusual-looking before certainly were now, would be removed to Camp Joyful in the neutral wasteland area just outside Republic territory, and might on occasion be allowed to return in order to be publicly executed. Unsurprisingly, each suspect only received this privilege once.