Smuggler, p.11
Smuggler, page 11
part #2 of Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Series
The question was, how to get the bloody money?
For the entire way to Greater Ashton, Dansby roamed the ship’s hold whenever he could do so.
So much metal couldn’t be easily hidden — it had to be in a crate — and Fell had not shown that he was much interested in trying to hide his doings with the addle, after all. The drug itself was simply packaged up as a normal crate.
He finally found a likely candidate, back amongst the very oldest stacks, among crates that might have come aboard with Tyche’s original stores when she was first commissioned. All of the crates here were banged up and dusty, save one with less dust and a suspiciously light crate atop it — one which could be shoved aside by a single man, even though it was as tall as a man on each side — to give access to the crate beneath.
That one had a bit of a hatch in its top, not normal for a crate of ship’s stores, just large enough for a man.
Dansby gave a glance around the dark shadows of the deep hold, then slipped inside the lower crate. He returned the hatch to close himself in darkness before turning on his tablet’s light, so that its glow wouldn’t give him away.
The lower half of the crate was full, giving Dansby room only to crouch atop the sturdy boxes that half-filled it. The lids of those came off easily and he was quickly dazzled by the reflections of his tablet’s glow — gold and silver glints sparkled in his eyes, along with bits of purple from the gallenium in one of the boxes. Two other boxes had heavy lids, and he didn’t open those, assuming they were the radiologicals from Fell’s ledger.
Dansby upped his estimate of Fell’s takings beyond even the purser’s calculations.
Fell might not have so good a source to sell some of these things as Dansby did, and he might be calculating in some discount. The more he thought, the more Dansby found that likely — the gallenium would have to be sold at a discount of market, of course, as its mere possession without a license would be a capital offense, but the rest was simply metals. Fell might be selling the whole lot to one fence who was discounting the entire cargo along with the gallenium, but Dansby thought separating the two would gain far more coin.
Perhaps twice as much as Fell’s number.
Dansby picked up a bar of gold and one of gallenium in his hands and hefted them while he grinned.
By the time they reached Greater Ashton, Dansby had the beginnings of a plan for getting a crate of illegal metals, two meters square, off of a ship filled with three hundred spacers and marines, while simultaneously taking his own leg-bail from a Navy which both frowned on and expected such things from its spacers.
It wasn’t what he’d call a good plan, nor a safe plan, nor, really, what any one might, in good conscience, deem a sane plan — but, then, nearly a hundred-thousand pounds enrichment in a single act couldn’t be contemplated without allowing some risk, now could it?
“Are you daft?” Milhouse asked.
Dansby peered into his beer. Greater Ashton was no station with limited access — there was a whole bloody planet out there. Unsettled, wild, and generally unlivable, yes, but the Navy recognized that a man could easily hide himself in such a place until his ship must sail on. Then a bit of a walk back to a settlement would put him — hungry and dirty though he might be — within reach of work at any of the mines, and with a dream of a claim of his own.
That being the case, there was only one street of Greater Ashton’s town the crew was allowed to seek their ease in, with ship’s marines at either end, patrolling its length, and scattered about the most obvious alleyways.
Elizabeth had arrived before Tyche again and put down a few of the crew as Dansby’d asked, then taken to her waiting in darkspace again.
“Y’want me to return to Miss Kaycie without you a second time?” Milhouse went on. “Did y’not read her response t’yer last message?”
“I did,” Dansby said, “but I’ve not finished my business aboard Tyche.”
“And won’t tell a man what that business is, even as he’s puttin’ his life and very bollocks on line t’be yer messenger?”
Dansby shrugged and drank. He didn’t want to give out too much information, either to the crew or Kaycie herself. The Kaycie-voice in his head had changed from urging him to stay aboard Tyche and end the addle trade to berating him for risking himself over the slim chance he might find a way to get Fell’s illicit ores off the ship, to, now, insisting that he was a bloody, greedy fool.
He was certain the Kaycie-voice was quite overestimating the risk involved. If conditions weren’t exactly right, of course, he’d never try it anyway, and would look for some other way.
“She won’t take your bollocks, no matter what she says,” Dansby said. “She’d not do that.”
Milhouse drained his beer and motioned to the bartend for another, then shuddered. “Oh, it’s not Miss Kaycie threatenin’ that,” he said, “but her pet Presgraves — with Detheridge looking on an’ fingerin’ at her pockets ‘though she’s a blade there.” A new beer arrived and Milhouse drained half. “It’s a fair troika of lasses runnin’ things in your absence, captain, sir, and they’re none too pleased with you.”
“What’ve I done to displease Detheridge and Presgraves?”
Milhouse gave him a bewildered look. “Y’displeased Miss Kaycie, an’ when one lass is wroth with her fellow, don’t y’know all are bound to be? It’s like —” He waved a hand searching for the right thought. “— when a few sani-pumps get in a bad cycle an’ soon as y’can see it there’s shite a’flinging everywheres.”
“I’ll be sure to mention your comparison to the three ladies on my return,” Dansby said.
Milhouse’s eyes grew wide. “Now, why’d y’be threatenin’ a man so o’er his drinkin’ words, captain, sir? Ain’t right.”
Seventeen
It took a great many more beers, luckily all on Milhouse’s, and thence Elizabeth’s, tab, but Dansby did finally convince the man he had no choice but to take Dansby’s plan and message back to the ship and Kaycie. A close-run thing, by any measure, and it was only Dansby’s better tolerance for drink, and drinking less, that left him in a state to convince the spacer that bashing his captain over the head and dragging him back to “Miss Kaycie” might not be the safer option.
Milhouse left and Dansby finished his own beer before rising himself. He’d be returning to Tyche before his leave was fully up, but there were preparations aboard ship that were best done when some of the crew were away and the rest were bustling about in the hold. No one would remark on Dansby’s presence there when there was work to be done, and he needed to take a few items aboard anyway. That meant a stop at a chandlery, and with his purse newly replenished by Milhouse, though only to the tune of a couple pounds.
It would be enough for what Dansby needed to buy.
He left the pub and made his way toward the nearest chandlery — not one for officers this time, as he had no need of a fancy tablet, only good, simple provisions, a few spare air bottles for his vacsuit, and replacement ship’s light or three.
He’d not told Milhouse what he needed the money for, nor what the ultimate plan was.
No, if he’d done that, then the spacer would have likely decided, too drunk or no, that bashing his captain on the head and dragging him back to Elizabeth and Kaycie trussed up like a spring bullock would be his only option.
Kaycie was likely to be even more wroth with the both of them when she realized what Dansby’s plan was, but he trusted her to carry out her part, even when she wouldn’t know until the last minute what that was. If she knew ahead of time, she’d likely fire on Tyche and try to take the ship in order to get Dansby out — that or leave him to his fate, shaking her head at the madness.
Dansby glanced around, liking the bustle of Greater Ashton’s field-side shops and streets. There were four merchant ships and a few other craft in orbit, with all their boats and crews making the port town a busy place. There was action in the air and he could nearly smell the opportunities — both for honest trade and other, more lucrative, schemes.
Just ahead was another pub, for instance, which was advertising its gaming tables and, after his luck at Corders Hole’s gaming, he longed to sit and turn Milhouse’s two pounds into —
A figure exited the building patting at her hip pocket where a winner at the tables would store her coin and Dansby was off after her like shot from a gun.
Rabbit looked up before he’d taken two steps, eyes wide then narrowing as her lips quirked in a grin, and the chase was on.
Bloody girl runs nearly as well as she —
Dansby’s thought was cut off as he had to dodge an antigrav cart full of produce being pushed along by a merchant crew.
Rabbit had already riled the men by hurdling the cart, hopping and placing hands on the uppermost boxes to swing her legs over and be off on the other side.
That had put a box of apples into the mud of Greater Ashton’s street and if the spacers couldn’t catch Rabbit, they’d take their displeasure out on Dansby who was clearly after her.
He spun away from grasping hands, flung fingers at the face of one too close so as to make him flinch away, shot an elbow into a gut he really hadn’t been aware of, but since the contact was made one might as well make the best of it, and was then away, boots splashing in the mud save where they ground a spilled apple or two deeper.
Brief though it was, Rabbit had gained ground on him.
“Stop her! Thief!” Dansby shouted, then, “Bloody merchant prats!” as half the street ahead of his prey seemed to clear while onlookers stood back smiling and cheering the girl on.
“I want my eight pounds!” Dansby yelled, then saved his breath for the chase.
She made the end of the street, opening onto Greater Ashton’s landing field, and cut to the right along its edge. Dansby followed, glad of her path because it led toward where Tyche’s own boats were grounded and was within the area blocked off by the ship’s marines.
Rabbit looked back at him, smiled wider, then gave him a jaunty finger-wave before turning again to dash up a ramp onto a waiting pinnace.
Dansby grimaced and ran harder.
That must be her own craft — somewhat larger than a ship’s boat, and capable of some travel in the Dark, if one weren’t entirely particular about accommodations and supplies.
She must have been ready to lift, as well, as the ramp started rising as soon as Rabbit’s feet touched it.
Dansby put his head down, pumping legs and arms.
He leapt, boots clanging on the rising ramp.
“Damn you! I want my eight pou —”
“… a leg!”
Aye, it was — and a fine leg at that.
Dansby had his arms wrapped around the leg and face and lips tightly pressed to its soft, smooth skin. He gave it another bit of a peck and began working his way higher. It wasn’t Kaycie’s leg, which should worry him, but he had that sort of background knowledge one gets that this was a dream, so he was safe there — so long as he didn’t wake her with murmurs of some other name, at least.
“… a leg!”
Yes, yes, he knew that and why there was shouting like that in his naked-leg dream confused him. Was this one of those dreams where two things were conflated? Perhaps naked legs with one of his old school’s anatomy lessons? Shall we name some parts?
A leg, he thought, working his way up with a kiss, a knee, a thigh, a —
“Shake a leg!”
Now, why would one want to —
Dansby was falling — bloody hell, he hated those sorts of dreams. He’d read once where it meant some sort of anxiety or feeling out of control in one’s daily —
“Oof!”
“On your bloody feet, Dansby!” Tart yelled. “You’ve slept your bloody drunk off enough!”
Tart moved on with a heavy boot for Dansby’s side and Jordan knelt beside him.
“Here you go, lad, up and about,” Jordan said. “Slept near the whole liberty away and more.”
Dansby turned his head from side to side slowly. It ached with more than the aftermath of drink — and his jaw was sore and swollen, with a tender spot just there.
“Bloody brambles,” he muttered.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
He rose and looked around Tyche’s gundeck, trying to get his bearings and adjust to waking here when the last he remembered —
Last I remember is that little bint’s grin.
Rabbit had been past the ramp’s top, turned to face him, hands on hips, and a wide grin, then … darkness.
No, not darkness, a black wave — like a rolling field of darkspace itself coming between them and lastly a spot of white, like a laser shot from a ship’s gun flashing toward his face, and finally nothing.
“What happened?” he asked.
Jordan stepped away with a laugh. “As I hear it, marines found you laying on the field and drug you back to the boat. Must’ve been a good one.”
Dansby sighed. “Aye, a good one,” he allowed.
All around him, spacers were folding their bunks up against the bulkhead, making the ship ready for the day’s work. They were in motion, he could tell — there was something about a ship that a man could tell she was in orbit, over underway in normal-space, or under sail in darkspace. More a feeling than anything he could point to, but he was certain they were underway.
Back aboard Tyche. He felt at his pockets, finding them empty. Two pounds lighter for my efforts, and without a thing I need to leave this ship with Fell’s ill-got gains.
Eighteen
Tyche left Greater Ashton, and, again, Dansby was beset by work.
Far more, he estimated, than necessary, now that he thought about it, given the ship’s oversized crew — the Navy, after all, staffed their ships to account for losses in battle, repair of damage from enemy shot, and sending crews aboard prizes. A merchantman of similar size handled tacking against a system’s winds with less than one hundred men, while Stansfield set every one of his more than three hundred to working at every opportunity.
As Stansfield called to leave a tack that, to Dansby’s eye, would have been perfectly fine for an hour’s more time, he became more and more convinced that Tyche’s captain, and the Navy in general, simply made up more work for their oversized crews, in an effort to keep the men from sitting idle.
It did give Dansby an opportunity, though.
With so many men rushing about at all times, it was simple enough for him to place himself for the jobs he wished — not those requiring the least effort, not this time at least, but those giving him the opportunity to find aboard Tyche what he hadn’t had the opportunity to buy on Greater Ashton.
“Mister Tart, sir,” Dansby said, exiting the ship’s forward sail locker. “The spare air bottles are empty, sir!”
Tart’s face — far too close to Dansby’s own as they touched helmets in order to speak on the ship’s hull where darkspace radiations kept their suit radios from working — twisted in a scowl. “Lazy bastards not setting them to refill,” he snarled. “Hook them up, Dansby! Then off to the purser and bring back a round dozen filled from stores! I’ll hear no excuses when next we tack! Lively now!”
Dansby went, lively as he could in the movement restricting vacsuit.
Back to the sail locker where he connected all the empty spare bottles to the locker’s air tubes, first adjusting the valves where he’d knocked them with his elbow when his watch was first called to the sails. It wouldn’t do for them to empty themselves again, after all.
Then down to the purser’s office.
“Mister Tart’s compliments, Mister Fell, and I’m to have two dozen of filled air bottles for the forward sail locker.”
Fell snorted, left off whatever he was about on his tablet — likely a tallying of his ill-gotten gains and some daydreaming about what he’d do with those when Tyche paid off — and shuffled back to his storeroom.
The bottles, each about the size of Dansby’s forearm, held enough air to enable a man to breathe in his suit for four hours — if he weren’t working hard or exerting himself in any particular way. Two would generally keep a man breathing through a single watch, even on the heavy work of the sails, but some would always gasp and groan more than their fellows, so the spares would go in the sail locker, close enough to swap out without too much time away from their work.
Dansby nodded to Fell, grasped the two handled cartons of bottles, one each hand, and hurried off.
He didn’t try to get the extra dozen he’d got from Fell to any particular place before heading back to the sails, only tucked them into a shadowy corner of the hold to deal with later.
There’d be an accounting between Tart and Fell of the number asked for and the number remaining in the sail locker, but with the reported storms ahead of them that would likely wait until they were at their next port or beyond.
He racked the bottles in the sail locker, swapped his own for fresh, and turned up his mixture a bit, feeling quite a bit better with the cool rush of more oxygen against his face inside the hot vacsuit. The prospect of several more hours playing pulley-hauley with the sails wasn’t nearly so bad when one was a step closer to leaving it behind with a fortune in someone else’s ill-got gains.
The other items he needed were not nearly so easy to get, but he managed.
Batteries were surprisingly hard, so he settled for a shot canister for the guns, freshly charged but discarded to the deck unspent during a gun drill, then secreted in the hold as its fellows were taken to the magazine for recharging.
The thing’s capacitors were meant to discharge their power in one, vastly powerful surge, but could be made to do so more gradually, as with any other sort of storage system.
A ship’s light came from normal maintenance, convincing a master’s mate, Tart again, that this one seemed a bit dim compared to the others, and then, even if the man didn’t agree, being sent to retrieve and install a replacement, if only as punishment for bothering one’s betters.
