Dark Sky (Keiko) (5 page)

+
Yeah, well
, someone’s
pressed
something
and it looks like it’s reset to Swahili.
+

She sighed, and rolled her eyes for Apirana’s benefit. ‘Time to go babysit. Strap in; I hear Uragan’s windy even when it’s not blowing a full storm, and you know what Jia’s flying is like.’

‘I’ve been on this boat the best part o’ six years, and she ain’t killed me yet,’ Apirana snorted, then grimaced as the
Jonah
lurched forwards out of the
Keiko
’s forward doors. ‘On second thoughts …’

They were still on time for their re-entry window, even with the small delay while Jenna adjusted their systems so everyone could once more read what they needed to, and Uragan began growing beneath them as Jia angled them down into its thick, hostile atmosphere. Jenna had found herself clutching at her terminal with whitened knuckles during her first couple of descents on the
Jonah
, but had soon worked out that for all her arrogance and bluster, Jia was, pretty much, every bit as good a pilot as she boasted.

Even so, it seemed that Uragan was testing Jia, judging by the fact that roughly halfway through their entry she snatched her ‘pilot hat’ up and jammed it on her head. It had a thick, furry lining, with a peak at the front and a fold-down piece on each side, presumably to keep one’s ears warm. Jia would never admit to it, but it was clear that she regarded it as some form of lucky charm in much the same way as her brother would absent-mindedly play with his dragon pendant.

‘That bad, huh?’ Drift asked brightly as the cockpit tilted sideways thanks to another gust.

‘Shut up,
bái chī
.’ Jia adjusted thrusters or flaps or … something – Jenna had about as much idea about piloting as Jia did about slicing into high-security information systems – and they started to level out a little. ‘O-
kay
, should be below the worst now. You wanna make yourself useful and check what berth we’re getting?’

‘Me?’ Drift looked hurt. ‘Your Russian’s better than mine!’

‘Yeah, but I’m flying,’ Jia replied shortly. ‘Don’t bother asking Kuai, either; I need him concentrating. Don’t wet your pants, they’ll have a translation program. Probably.’

Drift muttered something uncomplimentary in Spanish under his breath and opened a comm channel. ‘Uragan City Port Authority, this is the shuttle
Jonah
requesting permission to land, over.’

There was a short pause, then the speakers crackled into life with the stilted, pre-recorded voice of the
Jonah
’s own translation program.

+
Shuttle
Jonah,
this is Hurricane City spaceport. Please state your language of choice so we may calibrate translation software.
+

Drift directed a glare at the back of Jia’s head. ‘English.’

+
Acknowledged. Please repeat your initial transmission.
+

Drift sighed, and did so. The resulting conversation made no sense to Jenna as she looked down at the barren plain beneath them, but Jia clearly received some sort of coordinates as she began to bank their shuttle to the left. She’d just levelled out again when the cockpit door slid open to admit a somewhat vexed-looking Tamara Rourke.

‘Have you finished trying to kill us yet?’ the older woman asked bluntly.

‘Excuse me?!’ Jia’s head whipped around. ‘You see the sort of crosswinds I was dealing with there? I know you din’t, because
I’m
the one with the readouts and—’

‘The spaceport,’ Rourke interrupted her, pointing out of the viewshield, ‘it’s that way. Not over here.’

‘One day,’ Jia replied, pointedly waiting a couple of seconds before turning back to her controls, ‘you will have to fly this crate without me and then, god help you all, that’s all I say.’

‘If only that
was
all you said,’ Drift grinned, unstrapping himself and standing up before leaning on the back of her chair.

‘Don’t need you lookin’ over my—’

‘
Cristo
, I’m just looking outside!’ Drift pointed downwards and made a thoughtful noise. ‘Huh. See that? Never seen a spaceport like that before.’

Jenna released her own webbing and peered out as best she could. There, laid out below her, was the surface of Uragan City.

The city was in the partial lee of a ridge, but she couldn’t imagine that shelter would make a great deal of difference when the near-thousand mile per hour hurricanes swept down across this dusty, rocky wasteland. That would explain the barely visible nature of the city: nothing protruded more than a few feet above the surface and what could be seen was curved and rounded, designed to let the wind flow over it with the least resistance. Some things were clearly meant to be skylights, although how often they remained clear of obstructing detritus was doubtful, but the most common features were low, hooded structures all facing west. These were dotted everywhere, and it was a few seconds before Jenna realised they must be wind turbines. With the Rassvet star distant, weak and often obscured by clouds or airborne dust, harnessing the readily available wind power was the logical way to keep everything running here.

She couldn’t see the spaceport at first, looking as she was for a large open area crowded with shuttles and other atmosphere-capable craft, but then she realised her mistake. Big and heavy though such ships were, they would still be vulnerable in the teeth of a Uragan storm. The only place that could provide any meaningful shelter would be the same as for the human population: underground. Sure enough, she now saw that at one point the other features gave way to regular, oblong shapes of retractable roofs set into the ground, a little like the covers for swimming pools in her parents’ neighbourhood back on Franklin Minor, albeit somewhat larger. Some of them were drawn back for craft to enter or exit, and it was towards one of these that Jia was steering them.

‘Throttling back …’ Jia murmured as she reduced their speed, ‘engaging mags … okay, takin’ us down.’

The
Jonah
described a lazy half-circle in the air as Jia killed their momentum and began to lower them carefully down into what had seemed from afar to be barely big enough to accommodate their ship, but which now proved itself to have already admitted three others. Jenna realised that without any familiar structures to give her a sense of scale, her estimates of size had been rather out: each ‘cover’ was about the size of a sports field.

‘So which one’s this?’ she asked, on the basis that if she waited until she’d become separated from the rest of the crew somehow, it would be too late.

‘Grazhdansky Dok 2,’ Jia replied as they sank down below the rim of the bay.

Jenna frowned, turning the syllables over in her head. ‘Civilian Dock?’

‘Pretty much,’ Jia confirmed with a snort. ‘Guess they don’t have many non-government ships here.’

‘I … guess that makes sense,’ Jenna nodded slowly. ‘Well, maybe we’ll have friendly neighbours.’

‘Don’t bet on it,’ Rourke said suddenly, her voice flat and grim. Drift turned to her, immediately picking up on her mood.

‘Trouble?’

Rourke’s breath hissed out and she shook her head slightly in what looked like a mixture of frustration and anger. ‘Take a look over there at that
Corvid
-class and tell me what you see.’

‘
Corvid
-class?’ Drift frowned and peered out of the windshield. Jenna followed his gaze, trying to make out whatever it was that had perturbed Tamara Rourke. She wasn’t an expert on ship makes but there was only one choice where Rourke had been looking – a long, sleek shuttle with a design that had clearly been inspired by military vehicles, despite being a commercial craft. It was painted a dark green and its rounded rectangular snout appeared to have had additional decoration applied at some point: the heat of re-entries had blackened, faded and obscured the work, but it was still just about recognisable as …

‘Teeth?’ Jenna asked the cockpit in general.

‘Oh, shit,’ Drift sighed, with the air of a man who’s just found out about an unannounced visit by his mother-in-law the tax inspector. ‘Of all the fucking … that’s the
Pouco Jacare.
’

‘Shit,’ Jia added with finality, although she didn’t stop their descent.

‘The what now?’ Jenna asked, struggling to recall what Portuguese she’d learned.
Pouco
meant ‘little’, didn’t it …?

‘The
Pouco Jacare
,’ Drift repeated as their hull set down on the metal deck beneath them. ‘The
Little Alligator
. A shuttle belonging to one Ricardo
fucking
Moutinho.’

‘WHO EXACTLY,’ JENNA
asked as she trailed the others back towards the cargo bay, ‘is Ricardo Moutinho?’

‘Ricardo
fucking
Moutinho,’ Drift corrected her, without turning around. The Captain’s mood had taken a definite nosedive since spotting the shuttle that was sharing a bay with them. ‘He’s absolute scum: he’s a thief, a smuggler, a trickster, a looter, occasional bounty hunter—’

‘So basically, everything we are?’

‘Exactly!’ Drift turned round and wagged a finger at her. ‘He’s a
rival
! Weren’t you listening?’ He spun away again, hands checking the position of his pistols in their holsters.

‘Also,’ Jia whispered hoarsely to Jenna, ‘he has a massive cock.’

‘He
is
a massive cock!’ Drift barked from ahead of them.

Jenna looked at Jia in shock. It had only been a couple of weeks ago that she’d found out their pilot had secretly been sleeping with Micah van Schaken, their now-deceased gun hand. The notion that she’d also had a liaison with some sort of old rival, presumably also behind Drift’s back, suggested a near-superhuman ability at conducting affairs.

Jia shook her head slightly and, with her fist tucked in close to her stomach, pointed ahead of them.

Jenna frowned in confusion. The Captain had a healthy – perhaps more than healthy – appetite for the female form, but she’d never seen any indication that he was interested in men. She mouthed his name as a silent question.

Jia rolled her eyes for an answer and pointed again, this time with expressive raised eyebrows and a head tilt for good measure.

Comprehension still refused to dawn for Jenna. The only other person ahead of them in the corridor was …

Wait.

As though her attention had been summoned by some unearthly rite, Tamara Rourke stopped dead and turned back to look at them, eyes dark and dangerous beneath the brim of her hat. They halted in their tracks simultaneously, each unwilling to get any closer to that countenance.

‘Are you expecting to live through this job, Jia?’ Rourke asked coolly, while Drift’s footsteps
clanged
off towards the cargo bay.

‘Uh, yeah?’

‘Then I suggest you stop spreading rumours.’

‘How’d you know—?’

‘The only time I can’t hear your voice is when you’re saying something you don’t want me to hear,’ Rourke told her firmly. She walked towards them and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘Go find your brother.’

For once, Jia didn’t argue or mouth back and hurried away towards the engine room. Rourke turned her gaze to Jenna, who was still trying to prevent herself from looking shell-shocked and not feeling that she was succeeding very well.

‘So surprised?’ Rourke said, and her voice was softer than Jenna had expected; almost thoughtful, in fact. ‘Is it so very hard to believe that I might have had sex a few times in my life?’

‘Uh, I …’ Jenna wondered briefly how the hell she was supposed to get out of this one. ‘You’ve never … I mean, that is, not that I …’

‘Nor have you,’ Rourke pointed out. ‘When was the last time
you
found the opportunity to get intimate with someone, Jenna? Unless you were also sleeping with Micah, which quite frankly I doubt.’

‘Um,’ Jenna swallowed. So far in her career on the
Keiko
she’d either been keeping a low profile or they’d all been in mortal peril, and an inability to small talk in Russian had somewhat limited her chances on New Samara. ‘Does “too damn long” count as an answer?’

‘It does,’ Rourke nodded, with possibly the vaguest hint of a smile. Then she sighed. ‘Since it’s out now – and you’re the only one not to know, especially since Ichabod does like to remind me of the fact – I did sleep with Ricardo
fucking
Moutinho. Once. Many years ago now, and incidentally before we realised what a royal pain in the ass he was capable of being. All it really did was confirm to me that I hadn’t been missing a great deal by never finding time for it, in all honesty. Unfortunately, the fact that I didn’t fall at his feet afterwards and worship his overlarge manhood seemed to piss him off, as did the fact that
we
ended up smuggling out what he viewed to be
his
contraband. As a result, things haven’t exactly been rosy between our crew and his whenever we’ve encountered him since then.’

‘And you’ve encountered him a lot?’ Jenna asked in surprise.

‘The galaxy’s huge, but humanity’s still only settled pinpricks of it,’ Rourke replied, turning and leading the way towards the cargo bay once more, ‘and people who’ve made a career of doing the sort of things we do … well, we tend to cluster around the same pinpricks. It’s the nature of the business.’