Dark Sky (Keiko) (36 page)

‘
Restrained
,’ the Captain commented to Muradov in English, the lenses on his mechanical eye widening slightly as he focused on their lush surroundings.

‘
We have fled for our lives up and across a rioting city to our only hope of escape, and now we are here you want to offer sarcastic critique on the living arrangements of the man who holds the keys to it? He runs the entire planet, I would have thought that entitles him to something larger than an apartment
,’ Muradov said in apparent disbelief. He waved a hand dismissively and set off up the path with the gravel crunching beneath his feet, heading towards the white building which took up the entirety of the far end of the garden. ‘
Whatever. Follow me.
’

‘
Sure thing, Chief
,’ Drift replied easily. Goldberg and Karwoski were already crunching up the path as well, so Jia and Kuai fell in behind them. Jia was frowning, an oddly dejected look on her face even for someone who’d lost her damnable hat.

‘What’s the matter?’ Kuai asked, making the effort to be a good brother despite expecting a belligerent or mocking response. To his surprise, Jia sighed and gestured vaguely around them.

‘Just reminds me, is all. We haven’t sent any money back home for a long time.’

Kuai shifted his shoulder uneasily. ‘Well—’

‘And don’t say it’s because we haven’t had none, because we have. We were both gambling on New Samara, you know we were.’

‘You more than me,’ Kuai replied reflexively, although it was true.

‘Like that’s the point.’

‘I’m just saying—’

‘What fucking words are you saying?!’ Jia exploded, rounding on him with hands waving. ‘If you’d come to me and said, “Hey, we should send some of this money back to our parents so they can move out of that shithole in Chengdu and get a nice place on the coast,” you think I’d have said, “No”?’ She turned away and continued trudging up the path, hands now sunk deep into the pockets of her flight suit. ‘We both fucked up, and that’s the end of it.’

‘Okay, fine,’ Kuai replied, glancing ahead of them. The Captain hadn’t turned, perhaps being so used to Jia’s shouting that he tuned it out, but Muradov had looked over his shoulder curiously. ‘You’re right. Okay? You’re right. We both should have thought about it. When we get off here and get back to New Samara, we’ll send … what, most of our share from the account? We’ll send that back to them.’

‘
If
we get back to New Samara,’ Jia grumbled. ‘We fucked this job up royally, you think the Captain’s gonna take us back to where …’ She trailed off suddenly with a glance ahead at Muradov, then lowered her voice. ‘To where Orlov can get his hands on us?’

‘What, the revolution is
our
fault?’ Kuai protested in a whisper. ‘Even if we’d got the data back to
him
, it’d still be useless. Nothing’s getting shipped out of here any time soon, so he’d have paid us for no reason.’

‘Oh yeah, I forgot,’ Jia snorted, ‘those crime lords are always so reasonable and logical, aren’t they?’

‘Whiner.’

‘Old head.’

‘Little rabbit kitten.’

‘White-eyed.’ They were on the bridge, and Jia looked over the railing into the sparkling water. ‘There’s
fish
in this!’

The front door of the mansion opened, and a tall, slim figure clad in a dark suit with the Russian-style breastplate piece emerged. ‘Alim?’

‘Sir!’ Muradov called, raising a hand in greeting and increasing his pace. The rest of them followed suit, and their party broke into a mild trot as they came out of the wooded valley-in-miniature and followed the path up over the lawn in front of the governor’s mansion.

‘Alim, who are all these people?’ Governor Drugov asked in Russian as they reached him, in a tone just short of demand. ‘Where are your officers?’ He had fine features and a nose a shade too sharp for Kuai’s taste, with a closely trimmed dark beard showing the same flecks of silver that decorated his temples, and his forehead was creased with frown lines that were currently getting heavy usage.

‘Sir, I regret to inform you that the vast majority of my officers are either captured, dead or have betrayed the Uragan government,’ Muradov replied, a little stiffly.

Drugov blinked, apparently unable to process this information. ‘
What?
I’d heard that things were bad, even before the comms went down, but …’

‘Sir, we were able to deal with even major crimes, and we could handle riots and protests,’ the security chief said heavily, ‘but this … Less than one per cent of the population was on my staff. We simply couldn’t suppress an uprising of this magnitude, especially when the rebels had an unforeseeable ability to access the security and communications systems.’

‘You should have come here sooner,’ Drugov replied. His eyes narrowed. ‘But you haven’t answered my question, Alim: who are these people, and why do some of them have guns?’

‘Sir,’ Muradov said, straightening a little, ‘this is Captain Ichabod Drift, of the
Keiko.
He’s a freelance trader who happened to be planetside when things began. He and the two crew with him intervened in a planned ambush on one of my squads and were able to assist in dispersing the rioters before any more casualties were sustained. He’s armed because I trust him to be so, and he’s kept me alive already over the last twelve hours.’ Muradov paused for a second, and coughed into his hand. ‘He, ah, also doesn’t speak much Russian.’

‘And he’s with you because …?’

‘Sir, with the martial-law curfew in effect and him with no refuge, I couldn’t leave him to be potentially shot by my officers,’ Muradov explained, ‘or to fall victim to a revenge attack by the revolutionaries.’

‘I see,’ Drugov said, although the tone of his voice and his expression suggested to Kuai that this might not be completely truthful. ‘And the others?’

‘The two North Americans are Lena Goldberg and Dugan Karwoski, members of a different ship’s crew,’ Muradov explained. ‘I took them into protective custody to prevent them from being hurt in the riots, when they’d been separated from their colleagues.

‘The Chinese siblings are Jia and Kuai Chang, Captain Drift’s pilot and mechanic, respectively. I thought that Jia, in particular, might be able to assist us.’

‘You did?’ Drugov appeared completely nonplussed. ‘In what manner?’

Muradov frowned in apparent confusion. ‘Sir, the revolution is seeking complete control of Uragan City, and probably hoping to spark similar uprisings in our other settlements. As planetary governor, they will be seeking to either arrest or simply execute you. They breached the security gates between city levels using mining charges in some cases, or simply overriding our security protocols in others. When they get here, and they’ll get here soon, we won’t be able to keep them out.’ He paused for a moment, but Drugov still seemed not to comprehend. Muradov spoke again, with just the faintest hint of trying to explain something to an unexpectedly obtuse child. ‘Sir, Miss Chang is by all accounts a pilot of unusual skill. The eye of the storm should be more or less above us at this moment. I believe she may be able to pilot your shuttle into orbit, where we can dock with your vessel and make our way to New—’

‘Alim,’ Drugov said sharply, holding up one hand to cut the security chief off in mid-sentence. ‘Come with me, please.’ He turned and led the way into his mansion without looking back. Muradov frowned in apparent surprise, then started after him.

‘
Everything going okay?
’ Kuai heard Drift ask quietly in English at the security chief’s shoulder as their party moved somewhat uncertainly forwards.

‘
Wonderfully, why do you ask?
’

‘
Was that sarcasm, Chief?
’

‘
Captain, if you would keep your mouth shut for a few minutes you may just succeed in not making things any more problematic.
’

Kuai suppressed a snigger. He’d grown so used to the Captain being the smart-mouthed one in any given company that he found the professional, sober-countenanced Muradov verbally cutting him dead rather amusing. He looked around at Jia to see if she’d heard, but his sister was more concerned with their surroundings now they’d moved into the house.

‘Check it,’ Jia said in awe, drawing the last word out and turning slowly on the spot. The entrance hall, which was apparently climate-controlled to several degrees cooler than the sub-tropical environment in the garden, was a high-ceilinged atrium. The walls were lined with carved panels of a reddish wood, tall potted ferns stood in the corners and there was holographic artwork on the wall that looked expensive even to Kuai’s untrained eye. All in all, it was the sort of environment the
Keiko
’s crew never really experienced unless they’d just broken into it.

‘Yeah, just keep an eye on the Captain to make sure he doesn’t try to pocket anything,’ Kuai muttered, giving his sister a nudge to keep her moving in the direction of travel. The house seemed disturbingly empty to him: this was not a building that would be kept in such neat and tidy order by a man who ran a planet from it. There should be servants, surely? Doormen, security, an aide, a cleaner,
someone
. However, it appeared that none of them had showed up for work today.

He couldn’t really blame them.

They climbed a stairway wide enough for ten people to walk abreast, passed through a hallway and came out into what looked like a waiting area, judging by the luxuriously upholstered seats positioned around the edge. Kuai looked instinctively around for the security attendant such a room surely needed, but once more there was no one else to be seen. There were simply the seats, a holoscreen that was forbiddingly blank – he could understand why the governor might not want current affairs playing, given that the revolution had presumably now taken over all broadcasts – and a set of large, dark wooden double doors on the far side.

‘Tell the others to wait here,’ Drugov instructed Muradov, who turned to rest of them.

‘
Everyone please take a seat
,’ the security chief said in English, ‘
the governor wishes to speak to me alone for now.
’

‘
We’re not going anywhere
,’ Drift said with a shrug, slumping into a chair. Kuai looked at him in surprise – he’d have expected the Captain to want to be at the heart of any discussions – but Drift simply nodded at one of the other seats. Kuai sat down and the rest of their motley group followed suit, with varying degrees of ease: Jia threw one leg over the arm of her seat, while Goldberg sat perched on the edge of hers as though she expected it to swallow her.

No sooner had the double doors
clicked
shut behind the two Uragan officials than Drift sprang up from his chair and beckoned Kuai over to it. ‘
Keyhole
,’ the Captain muttered, pointing.

Kuai nodded and squatted down, putting his ear to the small hole in the wood. Archaic designs like this were all well and good, and might look rich and imposing and cultured and whatever else, but when it came to security they rather depended on having an actual person on hand to make sure that nobody was listening in …

‘Alim,’ Drugov’s voice came to him, muffled but audible, ‘why have you brought this group of probable criminals here?’ The governor’s voice was stern, sharper even than it had been outside.

‘Sir,’ Muradov replied, sounding uncertain of himself, ‘as I said, the pilot Jia Chang should be able to—’

‘I don’t need a pilot!’ There was a bang as something hard and heavy was slammed or thrown down onto another hard surface: probably a desk. It appeared that Drugov was a man who expressed displeasure physically. ‘What idiocy is this? Yes, the eye of the storm is above us now, but look out there, Alim! Look at it! Does that look to you like something any person could fly through?!’

He’s got windows looking out over the surface?
Kuai frowned.
I knew we were on the top level, but I didn’t realise we’d come that high. No wonder he’s so grumpy, with that sort of view every day.

‘With respect, sir,’ Muradov replied, ‘I’m fairly certain that the pilot for a freelance trader—’

‘I’d bet money that the man’s a damn smuggler, Alim, and you should know that too!’

‘So what if he is?’ the security chief snapped, then seemed to recover himself a little. ‘Sir, I know the circumstances and the company are far from ideal, but I know first-hand how tight shipping controls are on many planets, not just ours, and I also know that smugglers get around those controls! It follows that a smuggling pilot needs to be a damned good pilot, sir, able to get through conditions most people would consider impassable!’

‘I am
not
leaving Uragan!’ Drugov bit out. Kuai could hear footsteps on a hard floor: presumably the man was pacing. ‘I don’t care if that bitch—’

Kuai clenched his fist. No one talked about his sister that way! Well, except him.

‘—is the best damned pilot in the galaxy, it’s irrelevant! Do you know what would happen if I left here and went to New Samara, or wherever you’re suggesting? I’d be arrested, for starters. Dereliction of duty! Cowardice! Collaborating with rebels!’

‘Sir,’ Muradov began again, then changed his mind. ‘Abram. No one could blame you for leaving a planet when the capital had been taken! We don’t know if the other cities will be any safer, and in any case it would make most sense for you to go to the system governor and make your report in per—’

‘
Don’t
tell me my job, Security Chief!’ Drugov thundered. Kuai could picture his face, eyes wide and spittle flying: he had features that seemed designed to be angry. ‘The capital has not been taken yet, despite the apparent inability or unwillingness of your officers to perform their roles. We still have the fail-safe.’

There was a momentary pause, which Kuai could not imagine boded well. Nothing which followed the word
fail-safe
being used ever boded well, come to that.

‘You’re joking.’ Muradov’s voice was flat, but Kuai was sure he wasn’t imagining the edge of desperation to it.

‘Do I
look
like I’m joking?’

No
, Kuai thought,
I bet you don’t
.