Then there was a hand on my arm.
‘Hey, man.’ It was one of the deComs, backed up by the entrepreneur’s bodyguard. He looked scared but determined. ‘That’s enough. Leave her alone.’
I looked at his fingers, where they hung on my elbow. I wondered briefly about breaking them, locking out the arm behind them and—
A memory flared to life inside me. My father shaking my mother by the shoulders like a belaweed rack that wouldn’t come loose of its mooring, screaming abuse and whisky fumes into her face. Seven years old, I’d gone for his arm and tried to tug it away.
He’d clouted me almost absently that time, across the room and into a corner. Gone back to her.
I unlocked my hands from the woman’s shoulders. Shook off the deCom’s grip. Mentally shook myself by the throat.
‘Now back off, man.’
‘Sure,’ I said it quietly. ‘Like I said, sister. ’s a free world. Got nothing to do with me.’
The storm clipped us round the ear a couple of hours later. A long trailing scarf of bad weather that darkened the sky outside my porthole and caught the Haiduci’s Daughter broadside on. I was flat on my back in my bunk at the time, staring at the metal grey ceiling and giving myself a furious lecture on undesirable involvement. I heard the engine thrum kick up a notch and guessed Japaridze was pulling more buoyancy from the grav system. A couple of minutes later the narrow cabin space seemed to lurch sideways and on the table opposite a glass slid a couple of centimetres before the antispill surface gripped it in place. The water it held slopped alarmingly and splashed over the edge. I sighed and got off the bunk, bracing myself across the cabin and leaning down to peer out of the porthole. Sudden rain slapped the glass.
Somewhere in the freighter, an alarm went off.
I frowned. It seemed an extreme response to what wasn’t much more than some choppy water. I shouldered my way into a light jacket I’d bought from one of the freighter’s crewmembers, stowed Tebbit knife and Rapsodia beneath it and slipped out into the corridor.
Getting involved again, are we?
Hardly. If this tub is going to sink, I want advance warning.
I followed the alarms up to main deck level and out into the rain. A member of the crew passed me, hefting a clumsy long-barrelled blaster.
‘ ’s going on?’ I asked her.
‘Search me, sam.’ She spared me a grim look, jerked her head aft. ‘Main board’s showing a breach in cargo. Maybe a ripwing trying to get in out of the storm. Maybe not.’
‘You want a hand?’
She hesitated, suspicion swimming momentarily on her face, then made a decision. Maybe Japaridze had said something to her about me, maybe she just liked my recently acquired face. Or maybe she was just scared, and could use the company.
‘Sure. Thanks.’
We worked our way back towards the cargo pods, and along one of the gantries, bracing ourselves each time the freighter rolled. Rain whipped in at odd, wind-driven angles. The alarm shrilled querulously over the weather. Ahead, in the sudden, sullen gloom of the squall, a row of red lights pulsed on and off along one section of the left-hand freight pod. Below the flashing alert signals, pale light showed from the edge of a cracked hatch. The crew-woman hissed and gestured with the blaster barrel.
‘That’s it.’ She started forward. ‘Someone’s in there.’
I shot her a glance. ‘Or something. Ripwings, right?’
‘Yeah, but it takes a pretty sharp ripwing to figure out the buttons. Usually they’ll just short the system with a beakbutt and hope it lets them in. And I don’t smell anything burning.’
‘Me neither.’ I calibrated the gantry space, the rise of the cargo pods over us. Drew the Rapsodia and dialled it to maximum dispersal. ‘Okay, so let’s do this sensibly. Let me go in there first.’
‘I’m supposed—’
‘Yeah, I’m sure you are. But I used to do this for a living. So how about you have this one on me. Stay here, shoot anything that comes out of that hatch unless you hear me call it first.’
I moved to the hatch as carefully as I could on the unstable footing and examined the locking mechanism. There didn’t appear to be any damage. The hatch hung outward a couple of centimetres, maybe tipped that way by the pitch of the freighter in the squall.
After whichever pirate ninja opened it had cracked the lock, that is.
Thanks for that.
I tuned out the squall and the alarm. Listened for motion on the other side, cranked the neurachem tight enough to pick up heavy breathing.
Nothing. No one there.
Or someone with stealth combat training.
Will you shut up.
I fitted one foot against the edge of the hatch and gave it a cautious shove. The hinges were balanced to a hair – the whole thing swung weightily outward. Without giving myself time to think, I twisted into the gap, Rapsodia tracking for a target.
Nothing.
Waist-high steel barrels stood in shiny ranks across the cargo space. The gaps between were too thin to hide a child, let alone a ninja. I crossed to the nearest and read the label. Finest Saffron Seas Luminescent Xenomedusal Extract, cold press filtered. Webjelly oil, designer branded for added value. Courtesy of our entrepreneurial expert on austerity.
I laughed and felt the tension puddle back out of me.
Nothing but—
I sniffed.
There was a scent, fleeting on the metallic air in the cargo pod.
And gone.
The New Hok sleeve’s senses were just acute enough to know it was there, but with the knowledge and the conscious effort, it vanished. Out of nowhere, I had a sudden flash recollection of childhood, an uncharacteristically happy image of warmth and laughter that I couldn’t place. Whatever the smell was, it was something I knew intimately.
I stowed the Rapsodia and moved back to the hatch.
‘There’s nothing in here. I’m coming out.’
I stepped back into the warm splatter of the rain and heaved the hatch closed again. It locked into place with a solid thunk of security bolts, shutting in whatever trace scent of the past I’d picked up on. The pulsing reddish radiance over my head died out and the alarm, which had settled to an unnoticed background constant, was abruptly silent.
‘What were you doing in there?’
It was the entrepreneur, face tense closing on angry. He had his security in tow. A handful of crew members crowded behind. I sighed.
‘Checking on your investment. All sealed and safe, don’t worry. Looks like the pod locks glitched.’ I looked at the crew-woman with the blaster. ‘Or maybe that extra smart ripwing showed up after all and we scared it off. Look, this is a bit of a long shot I know, but is there a sniffer set anywhere aboard?’
‘Sniffer set? Like, for the police you mean?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. You could ask the skipper.’
I nodded. ‘Yeah well, like I said—’
‘I asked you a question.’
The tension in the entrepreneur’s features had made it all the way to anger. At his side, his security glared supportively.
‘Yeah, and I answered it. Now, if you’ll excuse me—’