The woman drew closer. No, he thought, nothing special. Too old, for one thing—he sniffed, as if her age was a personal affront—and dressed too mannishly for his taste. Women should look like women. Still, at least she was smart. She’d be something professional, he guessed—a teacher or a lawyer or a doctor or... Yershov frowned; his knowledge of the professions ran out round about here. Probably a doctor. Next question was: What would bring someone like this down to this part of the world? Husband worries? Boyfriend worries?
She came straight up to him. Nice necklace. No rings. Two small bags that he thought might be designer. Tired looking. Could make more of herself. She spoke quietly, her Anglais clipped and precise. Posh. “I gather you have a ship to hire.”
Yershov tugged his earlobe. “Mebbe.”
The woman leaned back on her heels and gave him a good long appraising look. Then she looked behind him at the snub-nosed pile of junk she was trying to hire. “It’s not state-of-the art, is it?”
“S’all right,” he said. Loyal to his knackered old ship, he added, “Does the job.” More or less.
“That’s all I want.” She sighed and looked past him once again. “It
will
fly?”
“It’ll fly.”
“If it’ll fly, then you’re hired.” She offered him her handheld. “That’s what I’m paying.”
He looked at the amount on the screen, sniffed a couple of times and pretended to consider it. “There’s some last minute repairs,” he said.
She added a few hundred units extra. “That’s as far as I’m going.”
He sniffed again, but he knew he wasn’t fooling her. Of course he was going to take the offer—it was the first he’d had in over eighteen months, and he’d barely been making ends meet from repair work. “I mean it about the repairs,” he said.
“I mean it about the money. I’m not going any higher.”
“No, you’re not getting it, lady.” He jerked his head back at the ship. “She’s dry-docked. Uncertified. What I mean,” he said, because she was posh and probably hadn’t ever had to worry about this kind of thing, “is that the phase technology is out of date. It’s not technically legal for this ship to fly.”
The woman closed her eyes, very briefly, then seemed to regroup. “That’s all right,” she says. “I don’t particularly want anyone to know that I’m leaving.”
He rasped out a sour laugh. “Like that, is it?”
She gave him a very cool look. “Whatever you’re thinking, Mr Yershov, probably doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
For a moment, Yershov was almost frightened by her.
Bitch
, he thought. Then he remembered that he was the one with the ship, and while she was the one with the money, she was also the one with the trouble.
She too seemed to be weary of the exchange. “Is any of this a problem for you?”
“No problem,” he said. “I know a few tricks.” He fair bounced towards his ship, scuttling up the metal ladder and opening the hatch, glad to be leaving Hennessy’s World. Spots even on the crummier docks were not cheap. “So where are we going, lady?”
She followed him neatly up the ladder. Her bags didn’t slow her down. “Satan’s Reach,” she said. “If you’re man enough.”
Y
ERSHOV BOUNCED AHEAD
of her like a proud father showing off his baby. A particularly foul-smelling, greasy, and unpleasant baby. Sliding down the ladder inside the ship, Walker almost gagged. The space was confined; the air stale and sweaty. As soon as she was sure Yershov couldn’t see her, she put her hand over her mouth and willed herself not to be sick.
This ship that she had hired for half of what she had made from the sale of her apartment was not big. Yershov pointed one way down the single corridor in which she now stood and mumbled, “Engines,” then he went off in the other direction. Walker followed him; the narrowness of the corridor prevented her from walking alongside him. There were two doors on either side of the corridor—leading to crew cabins, she guessed—and a couple more hatches underfoot which led, presumably, down to the hold. She wondered which cabin was Yershov’s. She’d take the one furthest from that.
She looked round with a sinking heart at the ship’s general state of disrepair.
What the hell have I let myself in for?
She hadn’t been expecting much, but she’d been expecting more than this. She wasn’t entirely convinced that it could in fact take flight. “When did you last get any work done?” she said.
Yershov looked back over his shoulder. “I do what’s needed. Other people are expensive.”
But had the benefit of competence. Yershov pushed aside a nasty-looking curtain, and Walker followed him onto the little flight deck. If she had been harbouring any hopes that here, at least, where the pilot must spend most of his time, would be comfortable, she was quickly disappointed. It wasn’t so much the disrepair that she found depressing, she realised, as she walked slowly round the small space, it was the dirt and the grime, the grubbiness of every surface, the general air that nobody cared. Yershov lived here—this place wasn’t only his livelihood, it was his home—and yet he couldn’t care enough to clear up around him.
The sight of the half-empty bottles lined up behind the flight controls did nothing to make Walker feel better. Yershov mistook her attention for interest, and reached for two glasses. They weren’t quite empty, so he tipped the contents into a third.
“We should toast our new partnership,” he said, pouring out some brown liquid from the nearest bottle into the two glasses.
“I don’t drink,” she said, shortly.
He frowned, as if this wasn’t something he quite understood, then shrugged and drank—first from one glass, then from the other. While his attention was diverted, Walker grabbed her handheld from her pocket and sent a fast and furious message to Andrei:
Who the hell is this guy?
She put her hands in her pockets. That way she didn’t have to touch anything. “You said the phase technology was out-of-date. What does that mean? Can this ship fly?”
“Sure it can fly,” he said. “I’ve got all the gear.” He turned his head sideways and lifted up a lock of lank hair to show the inputs where the flight jacks went in. “But then those bastards at space traffic control decided that the whole set-up—the software, the hardware, the interface with the wetware—was... now what did they call it? Obol... Obles...”
“Obsolete.”
“That was it.”
“And is it?”
“Is it what?”
Walker was starting to lose patience. “Does the fucking ship fly, Yershov?”
He glared at her. “Don’t get shirty with me, lady. Of course it flies. But it’s not legal to fly it within the Expansion.” He gave her a crooked smile. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Walker’s handheld buzzed softly. She dug it out, conscious of Yershov checking out the device, putting a price on it, and read the message from Andrei:
Trust him.
A second message came almost straight away:
Correction: don’t trust him at all, obviously. But believe me when I say he can get you where you’re going.
Walker shoved the handheld back in her pocket. Andrei’s word was going to have to do. Because, really, Walker thought, as she looked round the battered shell of the ancient ship in which she was proposing to visit one of the most dangerous parts of known space on a wild goose chase for a colony that may not even exist, how many other options did she have? She couldn’t charter anything on the books. So it would all have to be firmly off the books, which meant trusting herself to something that looked like it could barely heave itself up from the ground.
“All right,” she said. “You’re hired. When can we leave?”
“When do you want to leave?”
“How about now?”
He nodded at her two bags. “That’s all you’re bringing?”
“That’s all I need.”
“Didn’t think people like you could pack light.”
With a conscious effort of will, Walker relaxed. She folded her arms in front of her, and smiled at Yershov. After a moment or two, he began to get uncomfortable. “If we’re going to travel together for a while,” she said, “you’d better get one thing straight. You’ve never met anyone like me.”
He looked at her like she’d sprouted an extra head. “Huh?”
“Get in your sling, Yershov. I want us off Hennessy’s World within the hour.” She followed a hunch, and reached into her pocket for her handheld. “Don’t make me tell Gusev how disappointed I am.”
Andrei’s name, as ever, did the trick. Yershov hastened over to his pilot’s sling, strapping himself in and busying himself with the flight controls. Walker, with deliberate casualness, took the other sling. But her heart was pounding. Andrei’s name would hold him for a while—but as the distance between them and the core worlds grew greater, the threat of the Bureau would diminish. She would need to find another way to control this man.
“Yershov,” she said, suddenly.
He glanced up from the controls. “What?”
“What’s it called?”
“Huh?”
“The ship. What’s its name?”
Yershov ran his hand lovingly over the panel in front of him. For a moment, Walker almost liked him. “This old girl? She’s the
Baba Yaga
.”
He went back to plotting their escape from Hennessy’s World. The
Baba Yaga
. It meant nothing to her. But it would.
J
ENNY WAS CRYING
again, but silently, her head tucked into her mother’s shoulder, her small body shivering with sobs. Maria did not think it was possible to have experienced anything worse than what she’d been through over the past two days—fleeing their home in the dead of night; the long hot day in the desert while Kit had tried to fix the ship; the red-hot flare, strangely beautiful, of a whole world coming under fire... But the universe held even worse horrors. Jenny was now afraid of her father.
It was inevitable, really. Too long without sleep. Too much on his mind. And then they had realised that their escape from Braun’s World had not gone unnoticed, and that a ship was in pursuit... The wrong moment for Jenny to discover that one of her favourite toys had not been packed, and that the only option open to her now was to start screaming... But Kit could shout louder, and the sight of her father angry and out-of-control had hushed the little girl at once. And here she sat, her hot little head pressed against her mother, sobbing away to herself.
Maria stroked the child’s hair and watched her husband. Kit’s mouth was set in a thin straight line; his eyes were fixed on the displays; his knuckles were white where they gripped the controls. “That’s it!” he whispered, suddenly exultant.
“You’ve shaken them off?”
He turned to her and gave her a tired smile. “Yes. Well, for the moment. Long enough to give us a head start.” His eyes fell on the child in her arms. “Jenny,” he said. “Sweetheart.”
But the little girl shook her head and burrowed deeper into her mother’s arms.
“Leave it for the moment,” Maria said softly, and he nodded. She stood up, Jenny still in her arms, to carry the child to bed. From the doorway, she mouthed, “I love you.”
It took a little while for Jenny to settle, but eventually exhaustion did the work, and the little girl fell asleep on the cot she was sharing with her mother. When she was sure her daughter was in a deep sleep, Maria went back to join Kit.
He was still sitting in the same place, staring at the display, but he was holding a toy in his lap: a grubby little teddy. He held it up as Maria came towards him. “I found this in the bag,” he said. “I know it’s not Monkey...”
She bent to kiss the top of his head. “She’ll be fine. She’ll be pleased with Bear.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean—”
“I understand. These things happen. This is not... it’s not the easiest of situations.”
“I’m only trying to keep us alive.”
“I know.” They sat in silence for a while, and Maria listened to the gentle humming of the ship’s engines. Regular. Steady. “Where are we going?” she said.
“Shuloma Station.”
“Where’s that?”
He looked away. “On the edge of the Reach.”
Her blood went cold. “But not
in
the Reach?”
“Not quite.”
“Kit, I don’t want to take Jenny there—”
“Love, please! We don’t have many options—”
“So how have we settled on this one?” When he didn’t reply, she pressed on, “It’s this contact of yours, isn’t it? Whoever he is. Are you going to tell me who it is?”
Kit looked at her steadily and then, very slowly, shook his head.
“You can trust me, Kit.”
He leaned forward in his seat, and reached out to put his hands around hers. “It’s not about trust, love. It’s about your safety.”
“Oh, Kit, darling. What are we mixed up in?”
Again, he didn’t answer.
“I wonder if there’s anything I can ask you that you’ll answer.”
He gave a watery smile. “Try me and see.”
But she turned away, afraid to ask the questions that were most pressing on her mind, because then she might have to admit more truths about their situation than she would like.
“Please, Maria—perhaps I’ll be able to answer.”
“They’re there, aren’t they? On Braun’s World?”
He gave a puzzled frown. “Who?”
“Not who. What.” Her voice dropped. “The Weird...”
She felt his hands tighten. “What makes you say that?” he said, his voice light and false.
“I’m not an idiot! Fleet bombarded the planet! I watched them murder
millions!
What else could it be? Some kind of portal...”
His fingertips were tapping against her wrist. “Would it make any difference if that were true?”
“A difference? Of course it would make a difference!” Her voice had crept up, so she lowered it again. “They’re parasites too, aren’t they? The Weird. They get into your head. You don’t know you have them but they’re inside you, making you do things you don’t want to do until you’re not yourself any longer. You’re...” She shuddered. “You’re one of them.”
He was looking at her in frank horror. “How do you
know
all this? It’s meant to be classified!”
“Oh, Kit. Some secrets are too big to keep, you know.” She swallowed. “But if there’s a chance we’re infected, the slightest chance, then we shouldn’t have left—”