‘The fuckers,’ breathed Jarek. ‘Did she have any idea what they’d done to her?’
‘Not until it was too late, and then she tried to stop it. But the Sidhe had allies in the City, and one of them killed her.’
Jarek cleared his throat against the lump that had lodged there. ‘So,’ he said, ‘now you two are on for a noble but possibly doomed fight against impossible odds?’ He smiled to show he half meant it as a joke, but it felt more like a grimace.
The two of them nodded, not quite in unison.
‘Then I’ll get our guest out of stasis. I’ll keep him sedated and let the med-bay get to work on him. When he’s a bit stronger we’ll see what we can find out between us. He may know some of the passwords for the files I got from the Sidhe ship; even if he hasn’t got the access codes, he’s been with the Sidhe a while, so he’ll know the kind of things his little cell got up to. But first, I think it’s time you two got some rest.’ Jarek stood, and the others followed suit. He decided to take the direct approach. ‘How many beds do I need to find?’
Taro opened his mouth, closed it, then looked at Nual.
‘Two,’ she said, firmly.
‘Well, one of you gets the spare cabin. The other one can either use mine, or a couch in the rec-room. Your choice.’
‘What about you?’ asked Taro.
‘I’ll just doze up here.’ In a quiet system like this, he’d normally slave the bridge alarms to his com and use the run out to the beacon to get some rest in preparation for the shift, but he doubted his paranoia would let him sleep right now.
In the end Taro insisted Nual take the spare cabin. The boy seemed half-inclined to use Jarek’s bed, then said he’d sleep in the rec-room ‘for the moment’, rather implying, Jarek thought, that he expected to be sharing Nual’s bed sooner rather than later. Jarek swept some hardcopy, a hand-weight and an empty beer-bulb from the larger of the two couches, flicked the dirty sock off the fitness station when Taro wasn’t looking, then rigged up a makeshift curtain for some privacy.
He considered taking some stim, but decided against it; he’d just be fully awake to experience every nervous twitch, and bored shitless if nothing happened. What he really wanted to do was to get roaring drunk whilst listening to some of Elarn’s recordings, maybe have a good long, ranting cry. Unfortunately, he couldn’t afford that kind of self-indulgence.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Though he didn’t expect to, Taro dropped off to sleep easily, but quickly found himself in a nightmare of being chased through the nets and mazeways of the Undertow. Part of him knew he was dreaming, yet insisted he had to stay asleep, to see how the dream ended. The other part, the sane part, fought this crazed logic until he finally allowed himself to awaken. He came to sweating, grabbing the sides of his hammock - except he wasn’t in the hammock slung in his old homespace, even if it was dim as downside in here. He was on a couch in Jarek Reen’s ship, with the lights set low for sleeping.
When the last of the nightmare had trickled away he got out his flute. He ran his hands over the familiar smooth lines, then put it to his lips and played one of his favourite tunes, ‘Ania’s Jig’. He had no idea who Ania was; he’d learnt the tune from his line-mother, back when his hands were too small to reach all the holes. At the end he found himself overcome for a moment with a stupid, pointless desire to cry. He felt homesick, for fuck’s sake! But there was nothing for him in Khesh; the only person he cared about was here.
‘Nice tune.’
He looked up to see Jarek peering through the half-open curtain. ‘Sorry, Taro, I shouldn’t have disturbed you. I just came down to use the head and I heard music.’
‘It’s all right.’ Jarek was making the effort to be nice; he should too. He uncurled and stood up.
Jarek’s gaze lingered on the flute. ‘That’s an interesting looking instrument,’ he said. ‘May I see it?’
Taro handed Jarek the flute and watched as he turned it over in his hands, frowning. ‘This looks like bone.’
‘It is,’ said Taro. ‘The arm bone of my birth-mother. That’s how we honour our dead, by keeping a part of them. She died when I were a baby. Her sister brought me up. She’s dead as well.’
‘You’ve had a pretty shitty life, haven’t you?’
‘Sometimes. I’ve had some pure blade moments too.’
Jarek took the hint. ‘I’ll let you get back to sleep.’
Sleep took a while to return. When it did, it was mercifully free of dreams.
Taro woke up to an enticing aroma, something rich and sharp: caf? Nual had introduced him to the drink; it was still a prime treat. The room no longer looked like a crime scene; Jarek must have tidied up during the night. Nual and Jarek were sitting opposite each other at the galley table.
And there was someone else in the room.
What had been a blank wall had been pulled down to form another couch. An unconscious cove about Jarek’s age was lying on it, attached to a number of machines. After a moment of sleepy confusion Taro realised who he was looking at.
‘That the pilot, then?’ he said, with as much cool as he could muster. He hoped Jarek’s tech would do the trick on their prisoner; he knew what Sidhe healing did to your mind, the link it created. No way was he sharing Nual’s affections with this scum-bag Sidhe collaborator.
‘That’s him,’ said Jarek. ‘He’ll be out of it for a while yet. And good morning to you too.’
‘Er, yeah, good morning,’ muttered Taro.
‘If you want to eat you should do it soon,’ said Nual. ‘We’ll be making the transit in a couple of hours.’
‘Oh. Right. Did I oversleep?’
‘You looked so peaceful, I didn’t want to disturb you.’
Taro couldn’t work out whether Jarek was joking, so he said nothing. He made full use of the ship’s facilities - he had years of hot showers to catch up - though he had to put his dirty clothes back on, as they’d abandoned most of their possessions on Khathryn. He decided against food. His stomach was doing a kind of low-level flutter, like it knew he should be nervous, but wasn’t sure why.
When he got back to the galley, Nual said, ‘I may as well go under now.’
‘Under what?’ asked Taro.
‘Nual’s going to use the comabox during the transit,’ said Jarek. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to manage without one.’
So
that
was what he should be worrying about: Nual, going into stasis without him; he enduring his first transit out of stasis without her. He swallowed. ‘You ain’t got a spare ’box hidden away somewhere then?’
‘I didn’t have one at all until I took on our guest over there. Everything has to be locked down before entering shiftspace, so I need to stay conscious during transit, ready to restart the ship’s systems the moment we come out of the shift.’
‘Have you not transported passengers before?’ asked Nual.
‘Not often enough to justify buying a comabox, which takes up valuable cargo space. And the kind of people who travel with freetraders don’t tend to be overly concerned with comfort. Right, let’s get you safely asleep.’
Taro trailed after them as they walked to the cargo-hold. Nual let him hold her hand as she lay down in the comabox. She closed her eyes as soon as her head touched the pillow. If he’d believed in a god, then he’d have been praying he’d see her open them again, safe and well, the other side of the shift.
Back the rec-room Jarek told him, ‘I need to prepare for the transit from the bridge. I’ll be back down in half an hour or so. Make yourself comfortable, and try to relax.’.
Taro found that easier said than done. He wandered over to the ents unit in search of distraction. He’d just selected a simple, non-immersion splat-the-alien-menace game when he heard a loud oath from above. After a moment’s hesitation he kicked off and flew up the stairwell.
Jarek was bent over his console. He turned as Taro landed behind him. From his expression he didn’t appreciate the interruption.
‘What’s up?’ asked Taro.
‘We’ve just been pinged.’
‘Is that bad?’
‘Maybe. The ship that’s pinged us arrived in the last few minutes. They must’ve picked us up on long-range sensors, but noticed we’re not transponding. They’re probably just checking we’re all right.’
‘So why don’t we tell them we’re fine?’
‘Because any message I send will carry our ship ID.’
‘And that’s bad, is it?’ Taro knew he was being dense, but he was still getting his head around how this wide world outside Khesh City worked.
‘I haven’t been able to decipher much data from the
Setting Sun,
but I did read the engine-log. They transited out from Serenein soon after I escaped from them; that must be when they put the word out about Nual. The chances are they also told the other Sidhe about the
Judas Kiss
.’
‘Oh shit. Is that a Sidhe ship out there then?’ Taro wondered how scared he needed to be for the Angel reflexes to cut in.
‘Not necessarily. It’s transponding as a tradebird; but so did the
Setting Sun.
And someone hired that team back on Khathryn, presumably to snatch Nual. The Sidhe might be here to pick her up, or at least to find out what’s happening. But even if that’s not a Sidhe ship, I’d prefer not to broadcast my presence.’
‘So what’re you gonna do?’
‘I’m going to request a flash-transit.’
‘That’s not the same as one of them unscheduled transits, then?’
‘No, it just means we can shift out as soon as we’re at the beacon’s safe radius, and keep the transponder turned off.’
‘Won’t that be suspicious?’
‘Yes, and expensive, but all the other ship - whoever they are - is going to know for sure is that someone who didn’t want to be ID’d left in a hurry.’ ‘They won’t know where we’ve gone, then?’ ‘Only if they fly all the way to Khathryn, then physically go into the traffic control offices there and persuade the authorities to let them have a look at the beacon logs. Which, if they
are
Sidhe, I wouldn’t put past them. But we’ll be long gone by then.’ ‘What if they come after us instead? Could they catch us?’ Taro could feel his unfocused panic damping down, his mind clearing. He was able to see possibilities without being scared by them.
‘They can’t intercept us: we’re going too fast, and space is big. But if they’re willing to take the risk, they could change course and get close enough to slipstream us into the shift - which is another reason we need a flash-transit. Which I need to sort now.’
‘Sure. Sorry. I’ll wait downstairs.’
The minutes crawled by. Taro felt himself ease down from Angel fight-readiness and back into gnawing nerves. He started to pace, listening for noises from the bridge.
Finally Jarek half-climbed, half-jumped down the ladder. ‘Ten minutes to transit,’ he said. ‘We need to get ourselves ready.’
‘Uh, sure, what do I do?’
‘Well, have you done many drugs?’
‘Not today. Why, you think I should?’
Jarek smiled. ‘Possibly, but I meant in general. Shiftspace is an altered state, so previous experience sometimes makes it easier to deal with.’
‘I’ve been around,’ said Taro warily.
‘Good. Remember that when it gets weird. I need to make sure our passenger’s stable so I’ll sort something to ease us into the transit while I’m at it.’
Taro sat on the couch, hands between his knees, his shoulders tensing, while Jarek checked on the unconscious pilot in his cocoon of machines. He made some adjustments, then came over to sit next to Taro. He had an inhaler in his hand.
‘It’s a sedative,’ he said, ‘to relax you.’ He took a small hit himself, then handed it across.
Taro breathed deep. He didn’t recognise the drug, but the heavy warmth spreading through his body felt good. Even so, he experienced another small spike of panic when the lights dimmed.