At least that seemed to say she’d forgiven him for blowing up their client and had plans for later, which Dansby was quite on board with.

  This hatch let into Elizabeth’s hold, the boat docking alongside the keel, and he had to frown at how empty the space was. Not a bit of cargo left, only stores, and they’d have to replenish those — not here at Keldworth Heath as he’d planned, either. He reached down to give Kaycie a hand up through the hatch.

  “No,” Dansby said, answering Detheridge’s earlier question. “Prepare to make way — I’ll speak to whoever’s calling on our way to the Lagrangian Point.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “What the bloody hell happened, Topaze, we can’t reach Holder Wilmott and Port Wilmott claims they were nuked from orbit! Now your boat was the only one near, so I’ll have an explanation!”

  The ship’s chandler in Landing, the main, proper spaceport on Keldworth Heath, was a bit unhappy.

  “Wall, now,” Dansby said, trying to keep the accent and persona that went along with this one of Elizabeth’s numerous false names. “Ah don’ rahtly know the whole of it, sir.”

  “You were there!”

  “Sir, Ah was chartered t’bring Mister Wilmott those crates an’ mah Topaze brought that man his crates, sir. Then that Mister Wilmott opens them crates, sir, an’ what does Ah see, sir, but nuclahr mining charges, sir, an your Mister Wilmott — your Mister Wilmott, sir, an’ none o’ mine — well, he starts to fondle them charges, sir, in ways a man oughtn’t touch a thing he’s not made proper promises to, if yah take my meaning, sir. An’ Ah says t’meself, Ah says, ‘Tobias Rigg, that there ain’t no brandy,’ as the proper bill o’ lading says it were t’be, sir, an Ah says t’meself after, Ah says, ‘That bloody Mister Wilmott —’ your Mister Wilmott, sir, an’ none o mine, ‘— well, he’s a’goin’ t’blow his fool self off Keldworth Heath if he ain’t careful!’ An’ so Ah says to meself, Ah says, ‘Tobias Rigg, y’get yerself an yer boat away from this fool afore he does!’ An’ so Ah did an’ so he done, sir! Just as Ah said, sir!”

  “Topaze! Captain Rigg! You remain in orbit, you! You’ve just admitted to smuggling and —”

  “No, sir!” Dansby pointed a finger at the signals console pickup so it would nearly fill the other man’s screen and shook it back and forth. “No, sir, not at all, sir! Ah shipped crates o’ brandy what had seals an’ bills o’ lading an’ all proper papers, sir! It’s Mister Wilmott — your Mister Wilmott, sir — who’s t’ hear such talk, sir! Endangering mah crew, sir! Ah’ve wee lads aboard, sir! An’ womenfolk, sir! An’ your planet’s all bringin’ in such things as’re so like to blow em up, sir! Whatever for, sir? Ah ask you, sir, whatever for?”

  “You’ll be banned from Keldworth Heath, Captain Rigg!”

  “Ah’ll report y’to the merchant’s guild, sir!”

  “Smuggler!”

  “Falsifier!”

  Dansby tapped the console to shut down the connection.

  “Kaycie, make a note that Topaze and Captain Rigg are no longer welcome on Keldworth Heath, will you?”

  “Aye, sir.” Kaycie stood at the navigation console, a wide, flat oval some two meters across at the center of Elizabeth’s quarterdeck. “Were you planning on coming back one day?”

  “One never knows,” Dansby said, “but best to keep track, just in case.”

  “True.”

  Dansby joined her at the navigation plot, giving the signals console back to the spacer who normally manned it.

  Elizabeth was just coming around Keldworth Heath’s bulk and lined up to break orbit and make for the L1 Lagrangian Point, between Keldworth Heath and its moon, where they could transition to darkspace and be done with this bloody system.

  “‘Wee lads?’” Kaycie asked.

  “Well, we’ve Smithey aboard — he’s only sixteen, if he remembers right.”

  “He’s nearly two meters tall — more now, I think, as the man’s growing every day.”

  “Still —”

  “And ‘womenfolk’?”

  Dansby cleared his throat. “It’s a Fringe world — they have odd thoughts about such things.”

  Kaycie raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s a persona, Kaycie. While Captain Rigg might think it a thing to mention, it doesn’t mean that I do. You and Detheridge and even bloody Presgraves are —” Dansby frowned. “Where is Presgraves, anyway? I haven’t seen her since we came back aboard.”

  Kaycie sighed. “Locked up. Sween had to knock her out and drag her to the hold.”

  “What? Why?”

  Dansby wasn’t entirely surprised, Presgraves was a frequent visitor to a small, locking room in the hold and when that was necessary it was best that it was her … well, whatever Culloden Sween was to her, be the one to get her there. He’d pay for it with bruises and perhaps a tooth when she woke, but later swear the making up was worth the price.

  “You blew up a planet without her,” Kaycie said.

  Dansby winced. Presgraves and her bloody love of explosions. If he’d known what he’d wind up doing, he’d have brought her with, if only to avoid the consequences of leaving her out.

  “I see … I suppose I’ll have to find something else to let her blow up in compensation.”

  “Hard to top a planet.”

  “Milhouse?” Dansby called to the spacer on the tactical console.

  “Aye, sir?”

  “Be sure to record some readings of Keldworth Heath as we leave, will you, so I can prove to Presgraves that I didn’t blow up the whole bloody planet?”

  “Aye, sir.” Milhouse began tapping at his console. “Crazy bint won’t believe it,” he muttered.

  Dansby sighed. She likely wouldn’t and he wasn’t at all certain she wouldn’t try to blow up the next place they made planetfall just to spite him.

  “I’ll be in my cabin until we transition,” he announced. He raised an eyebrow at Kaycie. “Care to join me to, ah, discuss the state of our stores and, um, resupply?”

  “Oh, yes,” Kaycie said, wrapping an arm around his waist and steering him toward the hatch.

  “Going to discuss stores and resupply with the captain!” she called loudly as the hatch opened. “For near three hours’ time, if he knows what’s good for him! Talking about supplies and where to put them in the hold, us! Important ship’s business, lads!”

  Dansby thought they’d have rather got the point without her grabbing his bum.

  Three

  Harold Carlton’s shop looked as though it had been in place on Penduli Station for a hundred years, despite the station itself only having been there for thirty and still under construction.

  There was no counter or much of anything for the public to browse, nor any sort of organization to the stock if they were inclined to do so, only shelf after shelf of parts for ships and ships’ systems, with no discernible organization. Carpenters’ printers sat next to half-disassembled tactical consoles, neither from the same type of ship, and beef production vat controls sat next to a jumble of different sized pulleys, all with no labels or even prices.

  A thick layer of dust covered everything, shelves, parts, and deck, save a trail from the main hatch back through the maze of parts to Carlton’s desk.

  Dansby made his way there and flung himself into the chair across from the skinny young man who might, if Dansby played this right, have a bit of a job for him and Elizabeth.

  “You really should rearrange the stock from time to time, Carlton,” Dansby said, “so it at least looks like you do a bit of trade.”

  Carlton scowled at him. “Too much work and no one cares, so long as the rent and taxes are paid. Neither of which you’ve helped with.”

  “Nonsense,” Dansby said. “We both made a tidy bit off that last run.”

  Carlton looked at Dansby as though he were mad. “The client — who had the potential to be quite a lucrative one with repeat business, I might add — is dead.”

  Dansby looked away. “Well, yes, there is that.” He turned back once his grin felt steady enough. “So, what do you have for us next?”

  Carlton snorted. “Not a thing, Dansby, not a thing.”

  “Come now, Carlton, that’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?”

  “You shot the client’s men, you stole one of the client’s best horses, you nuked the client’s compound, and him, with the very cargo he’d hired you to bring him … now no one trusts you.”

  “His men shot the damned horse out from under me! And Keldworth Heath’s a pissant little world. Word can’t have spread so fast.”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “Well, yes, there is that — but you never really did in the first place, so all’s the same, yes?”

  Carlton shook his head. “I can’t get a reputation for my clients getting blown up. You’re going to have to find some other fool to fix jobs for you.”

  Dansby took a deep breath. He didn’t like being at anyone’s mercy, much less a weaselly little broker like Carlton, but he did need the money. Elizabeth had barely enough in her accounts to pay the crew and resupply after he’d made the last payment to the agents searching for his mother, and there were already messages catching up with him asking for more funds to expand the search farther into the Fringe Worlds. He needed a job, and quickly.

  “Look,” he said, “you weren’t there to hear what that man had planned for Keldworth Heath once he took over, but he explained it to me — in great detail, over the bloody pudding at dinner. I tell you, Carlton, Wilmott was not a nice man.”

  The fixer’s brow furrowed. “Not a nice man?” He shook his head. “Dansby, have you ever considered that you’ve chosen not quite the correct line of work for your temperament?”

  “I’m not asking for a bloody saint of a client, Carlton, but a man who doesn’t plan genocide over a plate of spotted dick isn’t so very much to ask for, is it?” He sighed. “Look, I need the money.”

  “Wilmott paid well, for all he’s in bits now, didn’t he? Have you spent it all? You’re a profligate, Dansby. What do you spend it all on?”

  “I —”

  “Never mind. Look here —” Carlton raised his left hand, fingers cocked as though gripping a ball. “There are ‘nice’ jobs that come my way —” He raised his right hand, fingers cocked the same. “— and there are profitable jobs that come my way. Now, these things do, on occasion, come along inside each other’s orbits —” He swung his right hand in a wide arc that passed his left then hurried away. “— but it’s more of a cometary sort of thing, if you understand me.”

  “Carlton —”

  “Best you leave now, Dansby.”

  Dansby did what any man might when he’s put out of work and faced with the prospect of poverty and desperation.

  He was nearly, though not quite yet, prepared to seek out one of the contacts Malcome Eades, the Foreign Office man who’d set up his new identity, had given him and see if the man might have a job for him. Nearly, though not quite. Working for Eades might be profitable, but he’d prefer to make his own way and avoid such unsavory entanglements.

  Instead, he found a pub and downed the first pint before the bartend had turned away.

  “Easy, lad,” the barman said as he set a replacement before Dansby. “This is a quiet place, no trouble, eh?”

  “Do I look like I’m after trouble?”

  “Y’look like a man with troubles an’ wantin’ t’share ‘em.” He took payment for the second round from the coins Dansby’d left on the bar top and pocketed them. “Now, that sharin’ can come to a friendly ear, a willing wench, or bit of a blow — I’ve no time for the first, we’ve no custom of the second sort here, and I’ll tolerate none of the last.”

  He pushed the remainder of Dansby’s coin back across the bar — his other hand suddenly held a stunstick.

  “Drink yer drink, lad, then be on yer way.”

  “Is it … is it true what I’ve heard …” Dansby said, hoping he was being as clear and loud as necessary to be heard by the Navy men at surrounding tables. “About the Fringe Fleet, Sven?”

  “What is it you have heard, little friend?” Sven was swaying as he talked, and carefully enunciating each word in what was not his first language.

  Dansby’d met the big Swede in his third … no fourth? Well, no matter on specifics, but in some pub he’d visited in his current travels. The difference in numbers between pints and pubs was throwing him off in keeping track.

  In any case, the first bartend had been absolutely correct in Dansby’s intent and options. He had a great deal of despair, frustration, and anger to share tonight, and while Kaycie would have offered a willing ear, she’d heard it all before and he had no desire to burden her with his troubles yet again. Neither could he find a proper House to ease himself in, for Kaycie’d sniff that out and he’d pay for it, sure — Kaycie was out for that ease, too, for she’d sense his discomfort and make him tell it first. There were times a man didn’t want to talk, only find some physical release.

  Which left an exchange of blows, and he’d thought, for a moment, that he’d found a willing partner in Sven. He’d made a comment or two to the bartend about the accent of the big Swede two stools down from him — the bartender looking between the two of them shaking his head — and Sven had stood up to send his stool sliding across the floor with a mighty screech.

  Then Dansby stood up.

  Then Sven laughed.

  Then Sven patted him on the head, not needing to raise his hand even to his shoulder, and said, “Funny little man. Sven does not want to kill anyone tonight.”

  Dansby’d stared at the broad … well, he couldn’t quite say he was looking at the other man’s chest unless he looked up — and felt a wave of relief wash over him. He’d wanted a fight, not suicide.

  Sven wrapped a big arm around Dansby’s shoulders, the weight of which turned him and pressed him to the bar.

  “You wish a good fight, yes?” Sven asked.

  “One I’ll … survive …” Dansby gasped, finding it a bit hard to breathe as he was crushed between arm and bar.

  “Good!” Sven said, picking up his beer and pushing Dansby’s close. “We will fight together! You will keep little men off Sven’s ankles!” Another laugh that vibrated Dansby between arm and bar.

  They finished their drinks and left for greener pastures. Sometimes Sven would size up a pub from the doorway and move on, finding nothing worthy of his time, while others they’d have a drink or two in before moving on.

  Finally, Sven sighed. “It must be the Navy if we wish to fight tonight,” the big man said in a sad tone as they staggered past a pair of Station Patrol guards set to keep the naval spacers in the section Dansby and Sven were just entering. “This is sad.”

  Dansby scanned the signs sticking out into the station corridor ahead of them. There seemed to be a great many more pubs per hundred meters of corridor than even in the merchant sections he frequented.

  “You don’t like to fight the Navy?” Dansby asked.

  “Sven loves to fight the Navy men!” the big man said, earning them a narrow look from another pair of Station Patrol guards.

  Sven smiled and waved at them. Dansby thought it was a wave — but then the man was grinning in a way that made Dansby think it might be some sort of insult on his homeworld. Nevertheless, the Station Patrol passed on and Sven hurried toward a pub deeper in the section, away from where the guards were concentrated to ensure no Navy spacers would run for a berth on a merchant ship.

  “Yes, they fight good,” Sven said as they moved on, “but they do important work and Sven feels bad if too many cannot move to do their work in the morning.” He shrugged. “It must be.”

  Which left them to only find a few Naval fellows of like mind and engage in the necessary pre-sharing of troubles ritual known to drunken spacers everywhere.

  “Why,” Dansby said, “I’ve heard that there are … is … are not a single woman allowed aboard ship in the Fringe Fleet!”

  “Can this be true?” Sven asked. “Not a one?”

  “Not a one,” Dansby said, noting that they were being stared at by two tables of spacers, a goodly number even with Sven’s bulk beside him.

  “Why is this?” Sven asked. “Are women of the New London Fringe worlds so weak?”

  “No,” Dansby said. “No, it is not that.”

  “Well, then, what?” Sven asked. “Is this Fringe Fleet made up of bög and wish only —?” He grabbed Dansby’s buttocks somewhat harder than Dansby thought strictly necessary to get the point across.

  “No,” Dansby said. “No, it is not that.”

  “Then what?” Sven asked. “Tell me, friend, for I do not understand this thing. The women of Lónsfjörður fire guns and work the sails. Why do not those of New London?”

  Dansby gave his new friend a worried look, wondering if he’d had a bit of a seizure there, then assumed it was whatever Sven’s homeworld was.

  “It is because,” Dansby said, turning to put his back to the bar and face the room full of Naval spacers — beside him, Sven did the same. Dansby thought Sven’s bulk made up the sides in sheer mass, but they were far outnumbered in fists and heavy boots. He almost had the thought that they might be in over their heads — but that thought itself had mostly drowned three pints back, so it was a dim figure beneath the surface.

  He held up his hand, thumb and forefinger stretched wide.

  “It’s because,” he repeated, “the Fringe Fleet is small —” He drew thumb and forefinger together until they were only a couple centimeters apart. “— minded. Small-minded, tiny … minds. Intimidated by the lasses, since they have such small … minds.”

  The pub was silent, save for the clicks of glasses and mugs being carefully set on tabletops in order to free up hands.

  An older man with the hashmarks of a bosun’s mate on the sleeves of his jumpsuit stood up.

  “Lads,” he said. “Y’ve had a few, it seems, an’ t’were best y’were movin’ on a’fore there’s troubles. I —”

  Sven looked around the pub, frowning, then cut the bosun’s mate off.

 

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