The City Who Fought (64 page)

She'd always had the feeling that at one time he might have been master of his own ship. His competence, his knowledge and the high rank of many of his friends argued for the idea. But whatever happened had left him quite content to be Joat's crew.

She shrugged.

"Yeah, well, I'm not doing so well on my own, so maybe you'd better come along. Between you, you and Joe should be able to keep me from making things worse."

"Your faith alarms me, my friend," Joseph said with a laugh. "But I shall do my best to earn it."

Alvec gave Joseph a long, considering look.

Joat laughed. The two men looked at her. "We're all of us bundles of surprises, aren't we?" she said, and linked her arms through theirs. "Let's get going."

* * *

How did they do it? Joat wondered. How did they manage to make a place that was built at the same time as everything else on this station look this dilapidated?

North Quarter was reasonable enough on its outskirts, comfortable low- to middle-income housing and the modest shops that catered to that group. It was the people that signaled the change as much as anything else. As you got closer to the unspun docking sections the clothes got plainer and grubbier, or more spectacularly flashy. Joat found her fingers curling instinctively around the hilt of her vibroknife where it was tucked into its charging sheath in the right sleeve of her overalls. It was a small movement, nearly undetectable . . . but half the people on the corridor moved a little farther aside when she did it.

Which said something about their perceptions, even now in night-cycle, when the overhead ambients were turned down to let the shopfront glowers and holes shine by contrast.

This is the sort of place Uncle used to stop.
Before he'd lost her in a card game when she was about seven. She felt her shoulders hunch, her face tighten. Her body remembered those years; the feral child was still there, hiding inside the skin of the civilized young woman.

The professionals were out, too. Down here they didn't just saunter; you got detailed propositions.

Complete with anatomical details so lurid that she blinked.

"What you said about my succumbing to soft living would seem to be true, Joat," Joseph whispered in her ear. "I, who grew up on the docks of Keriss, find myself embarrassed!"

Joat grinned at him. "At least you don't smell of cop."

The Bethelite nodded. "In Keriss too we could always smell a thief-taker," he said. "Still, I remember a little more discretion from the Daughters of Joy."

"Don't be embarrassed," she said. "This bunch're way saltier than average. They're beginning to get to me too."

Alvec leered. "Y'oughta be storing this stuff up for use on Rohan. New Destinies is a deacon's convention next to that."

"Do you speak as one who knows?" Joseph asked, his voice cool. Alvec bristled.

"Tell me something," Joat said. "Why is it that men—even smart ones—are dumb as iridium ingots while they're settling who's big bull baboon?"

Alvec snorted. Joseph raised his eyebrows—a habit he'd picked up from Amos—and chuckled.

"Women are more subtle about it," he admitted. "I will try not to leap, gibber, or scratch my armpits too often in your presence,
saiyda.
"

The Rimrunner was an Earth-style bar with furniture that only accommodated the humanoid form. The windows were one-way, opaque on the outside, with colorful advertisements for liquor flashing across the dirty black surface. Inside they gave a clear, if not clean, view of the street.

They made their way to an empty table, covertly studying the other patrons, who studied them in turn.

Some of the men and women sitting at the tables or standing at the bar were sleazy-gaudy like most of the crowd outside; there were a few in conservative business jumpsuits, a few
too
well dressed, and a number in spacers coveralls. Those looked neater. You couldn't be messy on a vehicle with boost, not really. Not if you wanted to live.

A bored and blowzy waitress slouched over and took their order. When she'd returned with their drinks and departed with an air of never planning to return, they sat quietly and sipped grimly for awhile.

Conversation had died when they walked in, and was slow to revive. Most eyes were on the holo over the bar—an act showing surprising gymnastic skill, among other things—with occasional darts in their direction.

Finally, Joat leaned towards her crew and murmured: "So, Al, is there something we do? Talk to the bartender, put a note on the bulletin board, walk around shouting
we want to smuggle,
or what?"

"Someone'll come over," he murmured. "They're just checkin' us out."

They sat a little longer and Joat began to drum her fingers on the table. Two of them had sticky ends from a film of something on the surface.

"That's it," she said finally, putting her hands flat on the tabletop to push herself to her feet "I don't really want to do this anyway—"

A pale, thin-faced man with dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard was suddenly at her elbow. He wore a black jumpsuit with flared sleeves, which might be hiding anything.

"You're, uh, Captain Simeon-Hap, aren't you?" he asked quietly.

Three pairs of eyes bored into the stranger as he reversed the empty chair at their table and laid an open messager on the surface, sitting with his arms resting on the chairback.

"Mind if I join you?" he asked.

Joat shook her head. "You already have," she pointed out.

"Word is you've fallen on interesting times," he said, and smiled. Like the rest of him, the smile was thin and vicious-looking. "As in the curse."

She raised her brows. "Word gets around fast."

"Is it true?"

She sighed. "Yeah. It's true." She smiled in her turn, tight and controlled and dangerous. "We're gonna drink the money we have left."

Something invisible relaxed in the thin man's posture. "No need. Let me buy you a round." He looked pointedly at Joseph and Alvec. "Would you guys mind placing the order? Lisha will bring ours over to us, but you'll probably prefer to drink yours at the bar."

They looked at Joat, and rose at her nod. Joat could sense their reluctance, but they were both too experienced to queer her pitch. Nobody would want to book space with a captain who couldn't command her crew; particularly not people who wanted to be sure that their cargo got to its destination without inspection.

When Al and Joseph reached the bar they leaned against it, putting their weight on their elbows as if they were completing a journey of a thousand miles and their feet hurt.

"What'll it be, gents?"

"Arrack?" Joseph asked hopefully.

The bartender shook his head. "We got gin, we got whisky, we got beer . . ."

"Earth beer?" Alvec asked straightening.

"Four kinds," the bartender named them.

Alvec slapped Joseph's arm with the back of his hand

"Ya gotta try this stuff," he said. "You're gonna love it!"

Joseph looked skeptical but nodded.

"Two," he said. He looked briefly in Joat's direction.

"Don't worry," Alvec said. "It's nothin' she can't handle."

Joseph sighed. "Yes, no doubt you are right. Still . . ." He shook his head. Then he looked around, as though really noticing the bar for the first time.

"It is amazing," he said, "Except for the signs, this tavern could be on Bethel. It is like any number of places on the docks where I grew up."

"Yeah," Alvec sighed nostalgically. "Me too. I think they invented a place like this back on Earth, and they've been shippin' them out wholesale from the same factory ever since."

* * *

"C.O.D.?" Joat asked in disbelief. "You expect me to ship this cash on delivery?"

"Captain, smuggling is like any other business. There has to be an element of trust or nothing can happen." He smiled his thin smile again, showing a sliver of teeth. "For example, we're trusting you not to fly off somewhere and sell the cargo."

You're trusting that I know what happens to people who try to stiff the Organization,
she thought.

The criminal equivalent of the Better Business Bureau wasn't a formal league, but it did have a strong, working joint policy on welchers.

"Nobody ships interstellar C.O.D.," she said firmly. "At the very least I'll need credits up front that will pay the expense of the trip. I'm not interested in getting to Schwartztarr and finding out that this has been a joke."

He pursed his lips. "So, what would that come to?"

"Two thousand," she said firmly.

He raised his brows and laughed faintly.

"You'd better check your engines, Captain. Your fuel consumption is
way
off the mark."

"I'm going to have to bribe my way off this station. I consider that a legitimate," she smiled briefly,

"expense of the trip."

"They're supposed to let you continue to operate your business so you can pay your fine."

"Yeah, and they're not supposed to fine me the value of my ship for a misdemeanor, too. Two thousand up front, my man; twenty-five thousand on delivery. I won't even consider it without."

* * *

Joseph raised his brimming stein to his nose and sniffed dubiously.

"It smells like meat," he said.

"Meat!" Alvec sniffed his. "Mine's okay. Whaddaya mean, it smells like meat?"

"To me," Joseph explained, "this 'beer' smells like raw meat."

Alvec looked at him.

"Yeah, well," he grinned, "Ican't wait to have a steak on your world."

Joseph took a tentative sip and smiled.

"You shall have one of the best when you visit my rancho," he promised, "
if
you will bring the beer."

He was raising his still brimming stein to touch glasses with Alvec when a shabby fellow in a once-yellow ship suit elbowed him aside; beer slopped over Joseph's sleeve and down the front of his robe. He set the remainder down and wiped the fabric with a napkin. The spacer ignored him . . . until he poked a rigid finger into the man's shoulder.

"That," he said, "was clumsy."

The spacer turned to him; when he spoke it was with a strong accent, wheezing and sharp. "Donchu touch me you bastard son of a whore!"

Ooops.
Alvec thought. Joat had told him a little about Bethel, and he'd accessed more from the
Wyal's
database. That was
not
a good thing to say to a Bethelite; especially in Joseph's case, because it might well be literally true.

* * *

The bearded man handed Joat a credit chip and a blue datahedron.

"The information is protected by a very nasty virus, so I warn you, don't try to access it or you may find yourself drifting in hyper-space until you become a ghost story."

She smiled. "Smuggling is like any other business, there has to be an element of trust or nothing can happen."

He leaned his head to one side in acknowledgment, then looked over sharply to the bar.

Thwack.

She had never seen Joseph look quite like
that.
His face was pale, with paler circles around his wide blue eyes. He was holding a spacer in a yellow suit with one arm twisted up behind his back. Blood ran down the man's face from a broken nose.

"Apologize, you furrower of pigs," the Bethelite said quietly, in a voice that carried. "For the insult you gave my mother."

"Fardle you
and
your mother, like your pig daddy!"

"That was unwise."

Joseph's other hand gripped the spacer by the back of the neck and slammed his face into the glassteel surface of the bar again.
Thwuck.
This time something else broke.

Joat started to rise; that was
not
like Joseph. She also started to shout a warning, as another spacer in a yellow shipsuit rose with a chair in her hands. Alvec moved before she could speak, a quick snatch for the chair and a short chopping punch to the stomach—much less hard than he could have dealt, because the spacer simply staggered back clutching her gut rather than collapsing. The bartender had ducked down; he rose again, with a short bell-mouthed weapon in his hands.

Sonic riot gun,
Joat thought, as she prudently dropped flat. That didn't block her view of a beer stein sailing through the air and thunking with solid authority between the barkeeper's eyes. He fell backward, and this time stayed down.

Her new business acquaintance had vanished silently.
Good idea,
Joat thought, crawling towards the bar.

Good idea, prudent idea.
The tables were bolted to the floor, providing reasonably safe passage to the thick of things; bodies and pieces of furniture sailed through the air above, and grappling pairs dropped down to her level but couldn't roll past the table legs.

Joat encountered the waitress under one of them, just lighting up the stub of a dream-smoke stick and looking mildly entertained.

"I like the little blond one," she said to Joat, blowing a stream of smoke towards Joseph.

The Bethelite had just kicked a tall humanoid in the crotch, seized his head under one elbow as he bent over—evidently a vulnerable spot in that species, too—and was energetically punching him in the face.

"I got a thing for guys with muscles," the waitress went on. Alvec picked up another yellow-suited spacer and threw him in the direction of the door, clearing a pathway.

"He's married," Joat told her.

"So?"

"Uh," Joat shrugged, "whatever. Have you called Station Security?"

"Oh sure. We got a button under the bar, they'll be here in a couple a minutes." She drew deeply on her dream-smoke stick and offered it to Joat.

Joat shook her head. "No, thanks. I'd better be going."

She crawled under the next table and found herself beside Joseph and Alvec. Joat leaned out and grabbed their sleeves to get their attention.

"We're leaving. Now. Out the back."

"Aw, Joat—" Alvec began.

Another spacer was struggling with a stationer just behind him; the stationer staggered away, clutching at an arm. The spacer waved a long blade and shouted something blurred, lunging wild-eyed for Alvec's back. Joat and Joseph moved with the perfect coordination of dancers; Joat grabbed handfuls of cloth at wrist and shoulder and pulled the attacker forward, redirecting his force and hip-checking him into a sideways stagger. Joseph whirled aside like a matador as the lunge was thrown his way, stepping inside the curve of the outstretched arm and driving the stiffened fingers of one hand up under the spacer's ribs.