Smuggler, page 13
part #2 of Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Series
Another effect of the opened hatch was that the darkspace radiations made their way into the lock, shutting down the electronics, including the ship’s antigrav there.
The crate of metals, its own mass no longer holding it down, gave in to the brief rush of air and moved slowly — slowly but inexorably — toward the open lock.
Dansby, the magnets in his vacsuit boots holding him to the lock’s deck, was right in the way, but had no qualms about it. He gripped the crate’s edge as it approached, twisted his feet just so, and drifted out of the lock very nearly as he’d planned to all along.
He’d not, though, planned for Tart to step forward and grasp the crate’s far edge, his own helmet now in place and scrabbling to get a vacsuit glove on his injured hand.
“Let go, you bloody fool!” Dansby yelled, his voice echoing in his helmet for himself alone, as the radios couldn’t transmit against the dark energy winds.
Tart was a fool, though he didn’t know it yet.
He might have seen that the crate was nearly empty, but couldn’t have seen that what its bottom was filled with — gold, silver, platinum, and the even denser gallenium — gave it more mass than any crate of stores the master’s mate had ever dealt with before.
Muscles built up heaving masts and yards about were no match for the crate once it had got moving, no matter how slowly.
Tart’s fingers grasped the crate. His body stretched, boots clinging to the metal of Tyche’s deck, yet, still, the crate slipped out of the lock.
Once there, the darkspace winds raging about the ship were able to get a grip on it. Weaker near the hull where the gallenium there insulated the ship itself, but strong enough to be felt.
A gust took the crate in the side, starting it to twist and turn.
Tart strained, face twisting with the effort, teeth showing white behind his helmet’s visor, illuminated by the light atop the crate.
Then his boots clicked free of the deck and the last thing holding master’s mate Tart, purser Fell’s crate of ill-earned wealth, and a cursing Avrel Dansby to the safety of a ship was gone, giving darkspace free rein over all.
Twenty-One
Tyche flowed past.
Slowly, at first, almost imperceptibly.
The gaping maw of the airlock moved first away and then on, as the crate and its contents gained distance from the hull and were then caught up in the morass of dark matter that permeated all, slowed while the ship was propelled on by dark energy against its sails.
It was peaceful at first, still close to Tyche’s gallenium hull and the field that metal projected when properly charged.
Then they drifted a bit more, Tyche moved on a bit more, and all at once, faster than Dansby could credit, the ship’s massive plane and rudder were rushing past and the ship began to pull away, really away, not beside them any longer, which offered some semblance of safety, but moving off into the distance.
The winds struck them full force — unmitigated by the sails or hull. They lashed against men and crate, both, while the full pressure of the surrounding dark matter began to make itself known.
Dansby met Tart's eyes across the width of the crate and other man’s eyes were wide with fear, his mouth moving in words Dansby couldn’t hear.
“I did try to warn you,” Dansby muttered, working his shoulders inside his vacsuit to try and shrug off the sudden feeling there was a wall at his back. A wall pressing in — no, not a wall, but a slide of mud, oozing all about him and enclosing him in darkness.
A gust of wind flowed, whipping that feeling away as it gathered up dark matter to fling about, then another, knocking Dansby against the crate’s side and pinning him there with the force it carried.
On the crate’s other side, Tart was flung up, feet upraised above the open crate, by another gust, then twisted about so that he lost his grip with one hand.
Dansby pulled himself over the crate’s edge, hoping it would offer some shelter as he’d planned, and grasped Tart’s arm, with one hand, holding his other out to the man.
At first, he thought the master’s mate wouldn’t trust him and would seek his own grip on the crate, then the man’s flailing hand found his and he braced himself to pull.
The crate tumbled, struck by another gust, and seemed to bounce off a collection of dark matter, like a boat tossed against a rock by the river’s current. The lid came down, nearly catching half of Tart outside, but Dansby’s last, desperate heave got the man inside.
Dansby pressed his helmet to Tart’s.
“… idiot, bleeding-arsemonger!” Tart yelled.
Tart’s eyes were wide, his lips flecked with foam as he continued to rant, and it was only, Dansby suspected, his utter fury that kept him from feeling the Dark press in as Dansby did.
He’d known the crate would offer scant shelter, but hoped the presence of the solid block of gallenium bars at its bottom might help.
That wasn’t how it worked, he knew. The effects of the metal were more localized to its surface, like that which coated a ship’s hull. One had to be enclosed in the stuff to be fully protected, but surely so very much of it, in so enclosed a space, must offer some respite? Even uncharged by a ship’s particle projectors, it must help some?
For his part, he couldn’t tell now if it helped at all.
The Dark was all around, still, pressing in. Like laying on a great featherbed while six others were piled on top.
The spot between his shoulders ached to tell him there was something behind him, sneaking up — beside him, in front of him, all closing in and soon he’d be crushed to nothing.
The crate tumbled and spun, knocked all about by the winds, and though there was no up or down for those inside, there was momentum, mass, and inertia — all of which colluded to send them banging about into crate walls, each other, still loose bottles of spare air, and, worst of all, hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of little metal bars that all got loose from their storage and flung about, knocking into crate walls and its two inhabitants both.
“… thieving … skiving … bellend … knob-brained … bastard …”
Dansby stopped trying to touch helmets with Tart and simply let the man scream into the silent void between them. He was only catching one word in four, regardless, and had the gist fine from those.
Instead he set about getting the interior of the crate back to a semblance of rights. Metal bars and air canisters were everywhere, and needed to be stowed.
He’d just grasped two canisters of air when darkspace had its way with the crate.
The lid, which had swung closed, opened once more, both spilling contents to the void and offering yet another surface to the winds. Those winds took the offering and more, ripping the lid away, sending it, and the ship’s light atop it, skittering away.
Dansby reached for it, hands full of air bottles, but it was too far and gone before he even started.
Whether, open-topped, the crate would have stood up to the battering of dark energy against dark matter on its own couldn’t be said — Dansby ever-after maintained that his original plan was sound, and it was but Tart’s shooting up the crate that weakened it so. Regardless, the winds found its open top, the sides were driven against masses of dark matter, the seams creaked, split, and, finally, ripped apart.
Walls and bottom of the crate flew away, no two going in the same direction, while its contents seemed to explode in an ever-expanding cloud of debris.
Dansby wrapped his legs around Tart’s torso, whether to save the man or unwilling, himself, to give up the one other human with him in the suddenly endless void.
He grasped desperately about, grabbing at whatever was near. Bars of gallenium and bottles of air at the forefront of his thoughts.
Round or purple, round or purple …
The chant ran through his head, the only two things that might offer some hope for survival, either a bit of protection from the Dark or a few more breaths.
He grasped, grabbed, and shoved what he could into his vacsuits pockets, tool belt, wrapped them in its now useless safety lines, or tucked them beneath his arms.
He thought to enlist Tart to help, but a single look to the man’s face, illuminated now only by the glow from the chemical lights inside his helmet, revealed eyes nearly as wide as the mouth open in a drawn-out scream.
Tart was gone, mind lost in a spacer’s terror of being adrift in the Dark.
Dansby wrapped a safety line around the man, trapping his arms to his sides so that he’d have no chance to dump his air as many did.
There was still a chance, he was sure, and that was all that kept him from giving in the same as the master’s mate had done.
Kaycie was out there, and Kaycie wouldn’t let him down.
She knew his madness and would suss out his plan the moment she saw a lighted crate skip loose from Tyche. Kaycie would be coming, and, along with her, Elizabeth and safety.
Dansby held her image in his head — it kept the all-enclosing Dark back from him.
Nothing more he could reach — it was all flowing away, knocked here and there by the winds as he and Tart were.
Light.
He needed light. Something for Kaycie to find him by, and the light from the crate was gone, maybe leading her astray.
He got in his vacsuit’s pouch, then in Tart’s, and pulled out all the chemical sticks they both had, cracked them in his hands, and stuck their sticky, phosphorescent tubes to his helmet and Tart’s.
The Book, the rules for all the safety gear aboard ship, said use them sparingly — make them last, so that a ship might have more time to find you. Probably written by some fool who’d never been a’space, let alone outside a hull in the Dark.
Bugger that sideways, Dansby thought.
He needed light — a great, bleeding ball of it, so that Elizabeth’s optics would pick them up and bring Kaycie to pull him inboard and out of this mess.
Next was the gallenium — so much lost to the dark, and Dansby almost cried at that wealth gone, but there were bars and bars still in his pockets now.
His vacsuit pouch held a little tube of sealant, that would do.
Bars here and there, stuck to him and Tart — more for him, Tart could go barking mad from the Dark for all Dansby cared, but he’d spare a few for the man. Mostly around their helmets the bars went.
Didn’t work that way — had to be a full, complete layer, or specs of it, close enough together to make no never mind, cover nearly everything or the bad stuff got in.
There’s a calculation — a formula — learned it at good old Lesser Sewer. The effect only spreads so far from a bit, no matter how big the bit is. Sweet Dark, but I wish I was back in class right now.
He tried to work a bar with his fingers, make it soft, maybe it would spread.
Spread like jam … or marshmallow fluff. He blinked, paused, strained to think what he was about. Marshmallow fluff all around me. Surrounded by the stuff. Pressing in, drowning in it … but why is it all black?
Dansby shook his head, bit his lip, tried to get his thoughts back from the little ball inside his head they were stuck in, with all else filled with marshmallow fluff and feather beds.
Kaycie’s coming, he insisted to himself. More to do.
Air.
He had to breathe.
They had to breathe — don’t forget bloody Tart.
Want the man alive when Kaycie comes.
Alive and safe aboard Elizabeth.
So I can strangle the wanker.
His air gauge was low. How could that be? Had they been that long off Tyche?
No matter, they had … three spare bottles.
He nearly laughed. Three of his dozen, and for two people.
Never mind — three’s too many, anyway. Likely not make it through another before I drown in the fluff.
He replaced Tart’s, then his own, then let the third drift away. Didn’t need it, couldn’t use it.
He turned the valves on both suits to a lower setting. They’d have less oxygen in their suits, but it would last longer. Outlast them both, like as not.
He pressed his helmet to Tart’s.
“Why is the fluff so dark?” he asked.
There was no answer. Tart’s mouth was opened wide, but no sound came forth.
“Is it burnt, do you suppose?” Dansby mused. “What might do that? A torch?” He frowned and stared at the back of Tart’s throat. “Burn the fluff with a torch, like ‘round a campfire … do you suppose that might make a good pudding?”
Tart rendered no opinion on the matter, and Dansby allowed his own eyes to close.
Twenty-Two
“Bloody, idiot, man.”
At first, Dansby suspected that Tart had come to his senses and resumed berating him, but why would Tart, a man himself, put so much stress on the word as to make it a sort of insult.
“Damned divvy-headed man.”
And why would Tart be imitating Kaycie’s voice so?
No, couldn’t be Tart. It must be the Kaycie in his head, come to pay her respects now he was nearly drowned in the fluff. He could feel it all around him, softly enclosing nearly every bit.
“Greedy, grasping, selfish, dunce-buggered man.”
Well, at least he’d die hearing her voice. That was something. He could wish the Kaycie in his head wouldn’t be quite so judgmental about the whole thing. He was quite certain the real Kaycie would be more forgiving. Likely weep up a storm when they laid his empty coffin to rest somewhere — he did hope she’d have the sense not to commit that to the bloody Dark, itself. Bad enough his body’d be there, all covered in fluff. Undignified, that. He’d need a proper plot and a proper stone to offset an eternity drowning in burnt marshmallow.
“Manky, muppet-brained man.”
“Oh, do shut up,” Dansby said, insults were one thing, but he’d not take alliteration from a voice in his — “Ow!”
Dansby opened his eyes, wondering how he’d ever got the Kaycie in his head to wrench his ear nearly off, only to find the very girl seated beside his bed in his cabin aboard Elizabeth. For a moment, he was bewildered, thinking it a dream, but the softness that surrounded him was the down comforter he’d got for his narrow cot and the mattress beneath.
His mouth was dry, parts of it that oughtn’t be were stuck together and parted almost painfully as he worked his jaw and tongue to get some moisture back. Kaycie took a cup and held it to his lips — a weak grog, very weak, but the spirits and sugar hid the taste of the ship’s water well.
He reached out to grasp her other hand where it rested beside him and took in her face — hair in disarray, eyes red-rimmed and wet. Well, at least there was that — she might be cursing him, but she did care.
He opened his mouth to speak, but only the barest sound emerged, and he sipped again at the cup she held to wet his throat, then tried again.
“Did you get any of the gold at all?”
Elizabeth’s main deck was as welcome a sight to Dansby as he seemed to be to the crew gathered there — at least through one of his eyes.
The other wasn’t quite closed, but it was a bit blurry still from Kaycie’s punch — and he felt a bit put-upon by that.
It wasn’t that his first thought was for the gold — or silver, platinum, and others that had been in Fell’s crate. No, he’d quickly taken in all the important bits: he was alive, he was safe on Elizabeth, Kaycie was there and knew he was alive and safe, if she might have worried, but speaking at all would show he was in good health, wouldn’t it?
No, the important bits were all self-evident as soon as he’d opened his eyes, so why not ask first about the bits he couldn’t actually know?
The whereabouts of tens of thousands of pounds of metals must surely be at the top of one’s curiosity list, mustn’t it?
Bloody women.
“Where’s Tart?” Dansby asked, after he’d made a walk around the deck to greet his crew and reassure them that he hadn’t perished, no matter what he’d looked like when they’d brought him back aboard.
“That fellow with you? With the surgeon still, you git,” Kaycie said. “And how did you find another to go along with such stupidity?”
“His involvement wasn’t strictly planned.”
Kaycie shook her head. “Men.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“I’ll let you know when it’s not, you daft plonker.”
Dansby started aft for the surgeon’s quarters.
“It wasn’t such a bad plan, really,” he countered.
Kaycie’s nostrils flared. “Toss yourself off a ship in those winds riding a bloody box? My brothers built better ships than that in the nursery, out of leftover Boxing Day bits.”
“It was quite sturdy … until Tart shot it up.”
Kaycie grasped his shoulder. “You were shot at? Again?”
Maybe shouldn’t have mentioned that …
“Is there some reason I should ever let you out of my sight again?” Kaycie asked. “Because I must admit I’m at a loss, it seems you’ve no more than gone round a corner before you’ve lost the plot entirely.”
“It was a good plan,” Dansby insisted. “There was near a hundred thousand pounds of metals in that crate.”
“Mm hm,” Kaycie said.
“And once I’ve sent a message to Captain Stansfield, I’ll have put an end to Tyche’s purser smuggling addle onto all these mining settlements.”
They reached the orlop and the surgeon’s cubby there. While Elizabeth had no proper surgeon aboard, there were several of the crew who had some knowledge — at least enough to make do for a smuggler’s crew.
“That could be done without stuffing yourself in a box, you know,” Kaycie said.
Tart was in a cot against the hull, eyes and mouth, thankfully, closed, so that he looked far more peaceful than when Dansby’d last looked on him.
“Has he woken at all?” Dansby asked.
