Dark Sky (Keiko) (11 page)

‘Unfortunately, Captain, that assessment is not entirely accurate.’ He sounded genuine, but Drift could feel that cool gaze watching him. ‘It is Uragan City policy that no crew may remain in their ships while the spaceport is shut for a hurricane.’

‘I …
what
?’ Drift tried to fight down the sensation of increasing frustration. ‘Why not, for the love of God? Where are we supposed to go?’

‘We have had too many people trying to get out,’ Muradov shrugged. ‘Some idiot decides they can fly through a hurricane and finds some way to open the bay doors, then you get half a ton of sand and three rocks the size of apartments dropping in before anyone can shut it again. As for where you go, Uragan City is well-equipped with accommodation for visitors.’

‘Which will cost more money,’ Drift replied through clenched teeth as he stepped out of the interview room, ‘and probably goes up in price drastically when there’s a storm, am I right?’

‘Is capitalism not wonderful?’ Muradov followed him out and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Chin up, Captain; I am sure a resourceful fellow like you will be able to survive the loss. I will arrange for your crew to be escorted to your shuttle to collect essentials for the next couple of days, but no dallying.’ He turned and walked away, leaving Drift to trail in the footsteps of the officer who’d released him from his cuffs.

He found his crew in the main reception area, signing for the possessions they’d had confiscated upon arrest. He’d clearly been the last to be interviewed, but from what Muradov had said it sounded like they could have all been held had he slipped up and uttered a provable falsehood. He exchanged a glance with Jenna as she fastened her wrist-mounted console back onto her arm and booted it up again, but she didn’t seem concerned at what she saw so Drift assumed that there was no sign her files had been compromised. A quick scan of the area found the Shirokovs standing to one side, looking very uncomfortable. He didn’t feel in the slightest bit sympathetic.

‘Can we leave before the storm hits?’ Rourke asked him urgently as he scrawled and thumbprinted to recover his comm, personal pad and credit chips.

‘Too late,’ he replied bitterly, ‘we’re stuck here until it blows over now.’ He turned back to face them, saw the mixture of disappointment and anger on their faces and decided to usher everyone out before any comments about not getting paid landed them in further trouble. ‘C’mon, let’s get out of here.’

‘So what now?’ Kuai asked once they were safely out of the front doors of the
politsiya
building.

‘I vote we go find Moutinho an’ kick his ass,’ Jia said forcefully. ‘Bet you anything he was behind that pile of
hùnzhàng
!’ Drift couldn’t deny the appeal of the idea but he gritted his teeth and shook his head.

‘I asked the captain interviewing me if it was Moutinho – he said the tip was anonymous. They know Moutinho though, apparently he’s been here a lot recently, and now
they
know
I
think it was him.’ He sighed bitterly. ‘I’d love to take that bastard down a peg or two but we can’t afford to do anything that might bring these guys back down on us, and I’d bet good money we’ll be under surveillance for a little while.’

‘Brings me back to my question,’ Kuai pointed out. ‘What now?’

‘We need to find somewhere to stay until the storm blows over,’ Drift said as calmly as he could, although the frustration inside him was clamouring for at least a minor release by, for example, kicking his infuriating mechanic in his bad leg. ‘We can get an escort to collect clothes and so on from the
Jonah
, but let’s make sure we have somewhere to put them first. All the outsider accommodation is likely to be priced exorbitantly right now but,
luckily
, we have a couple of guides who know the city.’

As one, the entire crew of the
Keiko
swivelled until they were staring at the Shirokovs, who had tailed them out and then stood at a distance like a pair of anxious puppies. Drift wasn’t looking at his companions, but he was well aware that his own expression probably did not consist of sweetness and light. Aleksandr’s gaze skittered across them, and he licked his lips nervously.

‘Um,’ he said.

IT WAS TWO
standard hours later, the storm on the surface was in full swing and the turmoil in Ichabod Drift’s head was nearly matching it. According to his chrono it was slightly past 23.00 hours on Uragan City’s twenty-four-hour clock, but the bars didn’t appear to be quietening down much. In fact, there seemed to be a certain nervous energy about many of the patrons of Labirint, where they were currently drinking. Perhaps this was what happened when Uragan was on shutdown during a storm? Drift certainly felt cut off and isolated, unable to get back to the comforting freedom of space. Still, you’d have thought the locals would be used to it by now.

He took a sip of whisky, and pulled a face at the taste. There clearly wasn’t much market for the stuff here, and if it tasted like this he could see why, but he’d never really got on with vodka either. On the other hand, he’d bought it so he was damn well going to drink it. On either side of him the Chang siblings were sipping at
báijiŭ
, which seemed to have hit closer to their expectations, and across the table the Shirokovs were mainly looking uncomfortable.

It had quickly become clear that the two men had handed in the key cards for their apparently tiny apartment in the expectation of getting off-world on the
Jonah
, and that now they’d done that there was no going back. As a result they were essentially tied to Drift, unless they wanted to approach another captain and try to find passage off-world with them. For his part, Drift had toyed with the notion of just leaving them here since the information Aleksandr had provided was useless now in any case. The contract had been to bring it back to Orlov in person since it was too sensitive to transmit, and there was no way they could even get to the
Jonah
, let alone take off into the teeth of a raging hurricane. However, in the end he’d decided to stick to his side of the deal with Aleksandr, on the condition that the Shirokovs find them accommodation while they were marooned here.

As he’d expected, there were places to stay that weren’t in the districts set out for off-worlders; these were hotels normally used by other Uragans travelling from one of the other, smaller mining centres scattered across the planet, and they were far cheaper. The staff also didn’t speak much except Russian, but with the Shirokovs along as translators and Rourke and the Changs having a decent grounding in the language, they’d got along well enough.

Drift hadn’t been in the mood to stay in their somewhat cramped accommodation, however, and had come out to find a drink. Jia and Kuai had been eager to accompany him and he’d dragged the Shirokovs along more out of contrariness and the desire for a local guide than because he really wished to spend time with them. Rourke, Apirana and Jenna hadn’t been interested, and were presumably playing cards or something equally tame at this very moment.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked Aleksandr, trying to ignore his whisky’s unpleasant aftertaste. ‘I’d have thought you’d be eager to say goodbye to this place properly, given how you were just about to up and leave with no notice.’

Aleksandr glowered at him between furtive glances around the bar. ‘Will you please keep voice down?’

‘What’s the matter?’ Drift demanded. He was being needlessly abrasive, he knew, but he’d had a bad day and just enough alcohol to not really care. ‘
You
are still getting what you want. The best
I
can do right now is try to lose as little money as possible.’

‘And maybe you not take us when you go!’ Pavel spoke up angrily, his English considerably more broken than his husband’s. ‘Maybe this all trick!’

Drift sighed, eyeing the angry young miner. ‘You know, once upon a time you might have been right. But I’m a man of my word now.’ He assessed the blankness of Pavel’s expression and sighed. ‘I mean, I don’t break deals.’

‘And you would tell us if you did, of course,’ Aleksandr snorted.

Drift bristled. ‘If you think—’

‘Please.’ Aleksandr raised both his hands, palms outwards. ‘I understand you are angry, Captain, but we did not cause delay. We trusted that …’ He looked around them again, then leaned closer and spoke more quietly. ‘We trusted that documents you give us would work. I give you information you needed. We were coming with you. We did not summon
politsiya
.’

‘No, of course you didn’t,’ Drift muttered. He sank the last of the whisky from his tumbler. ‘Still, I’m surprised you’re not seeking out friends. Or have you already said your goodbyes?’

‘Saying goodbye would need explanation,’ Aleksandr muttered. ‘I have none. Not just “why?”, you understand, but also “how?”. This I cannot say to them.’

‘Huh.’ Drift nodded slowly. ‘Guess that makes sense. So, why did you want to get out of here anyway?’

‘Aside from the obvious,’ Jia put in loudly. ‘I mean, you’ve been living in an anthill all this time, why’s it bothering you now?’

Aleksandr frowned. ‘Anthill?’

‘Oh, for …’ Jia waved her hands derisively. ‘
Ants
. You know?’ She launched into a slightly inebriated explanation in Russian, trying to get across a concept that simply didn’t have much inherent meaning for natives of a planet that had never seen colonial insects. Drift left her to it and looked around the bar again, trying to put his finger on what was bothering him about the place, and for a sudden, surprising moment found himself missing Micah. The mercenary had always been more than just a gun hand; he’d shown an unexpected ability to read tactical situations on several occasions, spotting inconsistencies and drawing conclusions that Drift simply hadn’t seen, or at least would have taken longer to put together.

He went back to his roots: reading people. Many of Labirint’s patrons appeared normal, so far as the definition could ever be used of someone, whether that be sitting and drinking quietly or laughing raucously with friends, but not everyone seemed so relaxed. He let his eyes wander, trying to single them out without being too obvious about it.

There. A man with dark, thinning hair, heavy-set insofar as could be told beneath his jacket, a thin sheen of sweat showing on his forehead and what could be seen of his pate. He sat alone, but unlike the other solitary drinkers visible here and there he wasn’t staring into his drink, lost in his thoughts. He was looking expectant, almost nervous, and kept checking the pad on the table in front of him with only the tiniest movements of his hand.

Someone waiting for a friend, or for a date? Possible, but now Drift thought about it the guy had been there on his own since they’d come in half an hour previously. It was always possible that the person he was meeting was tardy … but it was kind of late to be meeting someone now, wasn’t it? Still, perhaps he was a Uragan night-shifter on a day off.

Drift cast his eyes around casually, looking for anyone else who didn’t seem quite right. He caught a couple of people looking back at him, but he’d expected that and none of it seemed malicious; a blue-haired Mexican on Uragan would just stick out like a sore thumb in a way that simply wouldn’t have happened on a more cosmopolitan planet like New Samara.

There. A man and a woman, her as pale and blonde as Pavel Shirokov and he with a thick brown beard which was longer than the buzz cut atop his head. They were nominally part of a group standing and chatting at the bar, but both seemed slightly reserved, as though a little preoccupied. The woman casually checked her pad – simply keeping an eye on the time, or waiting for an important message or call? – and tucked it back into the pocket of her …

Jacket.

Drift felt his gut tense. It wasn’t like coats and jackets were only worn on planets with atmospheres, because climate control didn’t always work, or one person might still be cold where another person would be fine, or you wanted more pockets, or you simply liked that jacket and how it looked – Rourke was practically inseparable from hers. But that woman was sweating a little, judging by the slight lankness of her hair, and it was far from chilly in this enclosed bar packed with people. So why wear it?

And the guy she was with was wearing a jacket too. And so was the lone drinker in the corner.

And, looking around, every one of the half-dozen people he could see in a jacket all looked a bit too warm and just slightly on edge.

There was one other reason to wear a coat or jacket: to conceal something. Drift concentrated again on the man and woman at the bar, since they were both standing and, if he was right, would be most likely to give themselves away. Another round had just been bought, but the man hadn’t yet finished his current drink, held in his right hand. He started to remove his left hand from his jacket pocket to accept the new glass, hesitated, then did so awkwardly and reluctantly.

Beneath where his left arm had been resting until a moment ago was a bulge. Judging by the way the fabric of the jacket was pulled downwards, it was a fairly heavy bulge.