The Baba Yaga (10 page)

Jenny seemed satisfied by that: the idea of her monkey adventuring through space clearly appealed. Maria glanced over at Kit, who had been silent throughout the whole exchange.

There were tears running down his face. He looked, Maria thought, like a man who had reached the end. Maria was going to have to be the strong one now. Because Kit wasn’t going to be around much longer.

She finished her soup, and then retrieved the bowls from her family, and put them on the side. Settling Jenny on the bed between her and Kit, she lay down beside the girl, who nestled into her. “Come on, Kit,” she said. “Lie down. I have a story to tell, about a clever monkey who one day got left behind, so went looking for his little girl, and had some wonderful adventures...”

Kit lay down on the other side of Jenny. And Maria told her story, and savoured every moment, because she didn’t think there would be many more of these to come.

T
HE
B
ABA
Y
AGA
hung disconsolately in orbit around Shard’s World. Walker, staring at the planet on the viewscreen, saw a world smothered in a grey haze. Ostensibly, she was contemplating their next move, but in fact she was wondering if this was the endgame. Her power bases had been centred on the inner worlds, Hennessy’s World in particular; her strength had been in the leverage she could put on the civil servants and Council members and other glitterati of the central worlds. Fredricks had been her only contact within the Reach, and he had nothing for her other than the advice to turn round, go home, and get on with being retired.

Get on with being a mother...

Retirement, however, was not an attractive option, despite Andrei’s apparent easy transition, chiefly because there would surely be consequences arising from her departure. Walker was not clear to what extent she was
persona non grata
back at the Bureau. In the current atmosphere, she might be facing worse than a slap on the wrist for a few traffic offences and failure to notify the travel office of her journey. To the more paranoid of her ex-colleagues, her sudden—and illegal—disappearance was sure to appear suspicious. Treasonous, even. No, a return to Hennessy’s World, however appealing right now, was not on the cards.

Which meant staying on the
Baba Yaga
, or else looking for another ship and a pilot more to her taste. She risked a quick glance at Yershov, spread out in his sling. There was a little cup of something next to his left hand, as ever, and he was staring glassily at the display in front of him.
Doped to the eyeballs
, Fredricks had said.
Brain full of junk.
How had she missed that? It was almost as if she was preoccupied in some way... And what did it mean for her mission? Skipping past space traffic control was one thing. Putting her life in the hands of a washed-up, drug-addicted pilot with a headful of melting technology to fly her through some of the most dangerous territory known to man was another.

And hers was not only the only life she was putting at risk...

“Yershov,” she said abruptly.

He jerked up in his chair. “What?”

“We need to talk.”

“What about?”

Your head, you headcase,
she thought; but his attention was already away from her. “Yershov! I’m talking to you!”

“Well, then, shut up!” he said. “Can’t you see I’m concentrating?”

“Concentrating? On what?”

He didn’t reply. Impatiently, she got out of her sling and edged through the narrow space to come to stand behind him. He was staring intently at the viewscreen in front of him. “What’s the matter?”

“Look,” he said, and jabbed his finger at the screen. “Look at that.”

What, she wondered, was she supposed to looking at? There was a little red dot on the screen—was that it? “Tell me what the problem is,” she said, in her best talking-to-junior-staff-members voice.

He looked round at her scornfully. “Can’t you see?”

She repressed the urge to throttle him. She didn’t want to be stuck in orbit around Shard’s World for the rest of her life, and Yershov’s melting brain was her only way out. “I see a little red dot,” she said, very calmly. “Which could mean all manner of different things. So tell me what it means in this instance.”

“Life signs,” he said, darkly. “On board this ship.”

“Well, I’m alive,” she said, “and you’re... here. So what’s the problem?”

“
That’s
us.” He gestured towards two green dots to the far side of the screen, then jabbed at the red dot again. “
That’s
someone else. There’s someone on this ship.”

Her first thought was the baby, but Yershov carried on. “Down in the hold. Hmm. Got to admit there’s corners down there I’ve not looked at in years.”

“Maybe it’s spiders.”

“Big buggers if so.” He gave her a sharkish grin. “Want to take a look?”

Stalking around a decrepit space hopper with a junkie ranked pretty low on a list of what Walker wanted to be doing, but that was exactly what she found herself doing next. They left the flight deck and Yershov opened the nearest hatch to gain access to the hold. He handed her a torch and sent her off round to the left, before setting off to the right himself.

After about five minutes of shuffling round in near darkness and barking her shins on crates that seemed to come out of nowhere, Walker had had enough. She reached out to the nearest wall, feeling for a light and, when she found one, she switched it on, and looked round her. Nothing, only more crates on which she could do herself minor damage. “Yershov,” she said, in a clear carrying voice.

“
Ssssh!
” Yershov hissed from somewhere across the hold and slightly ahead of her. He was still under the cover of darkness.

“For God’s sake, there’s nobody here! It was probably a false reading. Who would be desperate enough to stow away on a ship like this—”

Someone shoved past her.

“Oof!” Walker regained her balance, and twisted round. She saw a figure darting behind a stack of crates ahead. “Yershov! Over here!”

There were quick footsteps, and then Yershov appeared out of the darkness. “What?”

“Someone’s here—”

“Told you.”

“Yes, all right. Behind those crates.”

They both moved forwards slowly. “Come out,” said Yershov. “Come out, you bastard! Bloody cheek, stealing a ride off a man! Stealing his livelihood!”

Walker rolled her eyes. “Give over,” she muttered. To their stowaway, she called out, “You’re wasting your time. Do you realise how small this ship is? There’s nowhere to hide. You may as well come out now.”

There was a brief silence, and then, suddenly, the crates came crashing down towards them. Walker, who had been expecting it, jumped back and darted out to block any escape. She grabbed the figure’s arm, pulling it back, stopping their flight. Her prisoner let out a high-pitched squeal. “Shut up,” said Walker, and twisted her prisoner round to get a good look. She saw an ugly little creature with bulging eyes and blood-red tentacles hanging down from the middle of its face. It was clawing at her arm with a six-fingered, hairy paw.

Their stowaway was Vetch.

It was also very small.

It was a child.

V
ETCH.
H
UMANITY’S ONE-TIME
enemies, with whom the Expansion had been locked in a deadly war for years, and with whom an uneasy partnership now existed in light of the threat of the Weird. Walker, a product of the inner worlds, whose career at the Bureau had started after the end of the war, had not met many Vetch face-to-face. Of course, there were many images available, and the occasional diplomat passed through Hennessy’s World: huge, ugly, and imposing. But this one—while definitely ugly—was tiny and trying to screw itself up even smaller. Walker had not thought of the Vetch having children before.

“Fucking Vetch!” Yershov snarled. “Fucking Vetch on my fucking ship! Well, we’ll sort that out. We’ll sort that out right now.” He grabbed the child by its other arm and pulled. The child emitted that extraordinary high-pitched noise again, and Yershov belted it across the face. “Shut up, you little bastard!”

The squeal stopped abruptly. Walker, instinctively, wrapped an arm around the child’s hunched shoulders and pulled it towards her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Yershov tugged at the child, who whimpered. “Getting rid of this piece of junk.”

“What?”

“I don’t want it on my ship!”

“You’re planning to
space
it?”

Another loud squeak, and then the child spoke, in a strange, rasping voice. “Don’t let him do it, missus! I’m sorry I hid away! Don’t let him push me out in the dark so I choke!”

“Nobody’s going to push anyone anywhere,” said Walker, and Yershov, taking this as a challenge, began the tug-of-war again. “Yershov, stop this right now—”

“It’s dangerous!”

“It’s a child!”

“It’s
Vetch!
”

“I swear to God, Yershov, if you don’t take your hands of this child, I’ll find every damn painkiller on this ship and throw them out after it. We’ll see how long you last then.” She saw him flinch, and she pushed home her advantage. “Head
throbs
, doesn’t it? All those rotting wires and rusting metal. Think how it would feel, if there was nothing you could take to ease the pain. Think how much that would
hurt
, Yershov, throb after throb after throb, getting worse and worse, and you’re stuck in the void and can’t get out—”

“Fuck you.” Yershov shoved the child towards her. Walker released a slow steady breath, and then looked down at the child quivering within her arms.

“All right,” she said. “It’s all right. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Not me, and certainly not him. My name is Delia. Who are you?”

“Me? Failt.”

“Failt. All right. So we know each other’s names now. That’s a start.”

Failt sniffed, sending the tentacles jiggling. “Don’t know that one’s name.”

“He’s Yershov. You don’t need to worry about him.”

“He wants to throw me out! Into space! Where I can’t breathe!”

“You bet your fucking life I do,” Yershov muttered. Walker lifted a hand to silence him, and he obeyed.

“You can’t come on board people’s ships without asking, you know,” Walker said. “They’re liable to take offence.”

The child went sulky. “Didn’t mean no harm by it. Wanted away from Shard.”

“Well, I can’t say I blame you, I thought it was pretty grim. But what about your parents? Won’t they be worried about you?”

“There aren’t any.”

“You mean you don’t have any? You don’t have any parents?”

“That’s what I said, Missus Delia. There aren’t any.”

“Then who looks after you? Who takes care of you? Won’t they be missing you?”

Failt gave her an odd, calculating look. “You never been on Shard before, right?”

“This was my first visit, yes.”

“Nobody takes care of me. I report to boss, he reports to next boss, and so on up.”

Yershov was now angry again to speak. “Don’t you get it, you stupid woman? This is
property
! Somebody
owns
this creepy little bastard—”

“I told you to shut up,” said Walker, in a very soft voice, and, once Yershov had subsided, she turned back to Failt. “Let me see if I have understood this correctly,” she said. “You’re...” She hesitated over the world ‘slave.’ “You belong to someone, and you work for them. Is that right? And you hid away on our ship because you didn’t want to belong to them and work for them any longer?”

“That’s it,” Failt said.

Yershov was fairly shaking now. Not with anger, Walker realized; he was afraid. “I’ve had enough of this! We’ve got to get rid of this...
thing
! Airlock, or else go back. This is someone’s property. They’ll want to recoup their investment. They’ll come after us. Come after the
Baba Yaga
. These people aren’t your nice types—they’ll kill us, or drag us down with this one—” He lunged again towards the child. Walker caught his thin arm and twisted it down. Now it was Yershov’s turn to squeal.

“Ow! That
hurts!
Let go, you fucking bitch! That
hurts!
”

“Listen to me,” she said, in a clear voice. “Nobody is spacing anyone. Nobody is sending anyone back to slavery. For the love of God, this is a child!”

“It’s Vetch!”

“It is a he, and he is a
child!
”

“Do I look like someone who’s sentimental about children?”

“Do I look like someone who won’t follow up on a threat?” She tapped a finger against his forehead, hard. Yershov winced, but he quietened down again. “All right,” said Walker. “I’m not murdering a child, and I’m not sending it back into slavery. Is that clear?”

“As crystal,” Yershov said. “But if someone comes after us...”

“We’ll deal with that if and when it happens.” Walker put herself between Failt and Yershov, and pushed the child gently in the direction of the ladder back up to the main deck. “All right,” she said. “Everyone’s calm now. That’s how we like it.”

Yershov was muttering beside her. “I’d like to know how the little bugger got on board.”

Failt stuck his head round. “Wasn’t hard. This ship—anyone could get on board. Heap of junk.”