SAL KONSTANZ
The streets of Variance rang with the sound of metal being hacked, sawn and hammered. Welding sparks flew in the night air. Cooking fires threw dancing shadows on the heaps of scrap. Starship hulks lay like ruined buildings. I strode through the noise and bustle with the brim of my cap pulled low to shadow my face. Nod scurried along behind me, a cargo harness strapped over his scaly back, four hand-feet slapping on the packed dirt, the other two held high, scanning our surroundings for useful tech. I tried to keep watch for threats, but it was hard with half my visual field gone. I had to keep turning around in order to check both sides of the street. God, I missed Alva Clay. If she were here, she’d have had my back. I had one of her pistols strapped to my thigh, but it wasn’t the same as having her behind me. It bumped against my leg as I walked.
“How are you doing back there?” I asked the ship.
The Trouble Dog spoke via my ear bud. “About as well as can be expected, given the majority of the locals seem to want to strip me for parts.”
She sounded so disgusted; I struggled to keep the amusement from my voice. “Hang in there, we won’t be long.”
“See that you aren’t, or I may have to perforate some of these avaricious bastards.”
I left Nod to search for the spares we needed, and made my way to the end of the street, to where one of the dock rats had told me an old Dutch guy named Schreiber dealt in fuel cores.
The guy’s office turned out to be in the guts of a wrecked alien freighter.
“Hallo?” The voice came from the darkness between the stacked crates. “Who’s there?”
I kept one hand hovering over the gun, and used the other to tip back the brim of my hat. “I’m a customer.”
I heard a snort and sounds of movement.
“A customer, are you?” The old man shuffled forwards, dragging one of his legs behind him. As he emerged into the light, I took an involuntary step back. The damaged leg appeared to be a prosthetic jury-rigged from scrap. One of his arms had been replaced in a similar fashion. Instead of a hand, several tools and connection cables sprouted from the wrist, writhing around in response to his movements. “And what do you wish to purchase, Mrs Customer?” One side of his scalp had been plated with dull, matt steel, and his right eye had been replaced by a chunky optic unit. A bushy white beard covered everything from his nose to his chest. Feeling self-conscious, I raised my hand to the patch covering the hole where my own eye had been removed.
“I need fuel cores for a pair of Carnivore-class heavy cruisers.”
“But of course you do.”
“I’m serious.”
The little servo motors in his artificial eye made tiny whirring noises as he looked me up and down. “I may have something. But first, let me ask you a question.”
“What is it?”
“You are House of Reclamation, yes?”
“Have you tried asking them?”
I snatched off my hat. “I would, but they don’t exist anymore.”
The old man frowned. “What is this you mean? Don’t exist? How could they not exist?”
It seemed news of the Marble Armada had yet to spread to this backwater. Chances were, the population here would continue knowing nothing of the attacks until a pair of knife ships turned up in orbit and slagged anything they considered a military target.
“They were destroyed.”
“The whole House?”
“The whole House, and every navy of the Generality. All of them wiped out by an alien fleet that’s decided we’re too unruly to be allowed to run around unsupervised.”
“Bull’s shit.”
“It’s all true, I’m afraid. Now, do you have any power cores or not?”
I watched him try to guess whether or not I was crazy—and if sane, how much I might be worth. “You have two cruisers?”
“That’s correct.”
“And you are not Conglomeration Navy?”
“No.”
He pursed his lips. “Good. We had a captain come through here a few weeks ago. Impolite young man. Said nothing about any alien fleet. Sold him some leaky, second-hand cores. Kept the best for ourselves.”
“And are they for sale?”
“Perhaps, perhaps.” He shrugged his shoulders. “You have two cruisers; perhaps we can come to arrangement. Please, to follow me.”
* * *
I followed him through the body of the broken freighter and out into the open air, to where a Hyena-class frigate sat amidst the heaps of scrap. It looked battle damaged. Some of the hull plates were buckled and holed, and something had taken a chunk out of its drive cone.
“This fell through the system a week ago,” Schreiber said. “The crew was dead.”
“What happened to them?”
“I did not ask. One does not look gift horse in teeth.”
He led me up the main boarding ramp into the guts of the ship, where he proudly revealed two lead-lined cylindrical cases.
“These are fully charged spares. Conglomeration issue. Most probably compatible with your heavy cruisers.”
I tapped the nearest with the toe of my boot.
“Won’t the ship mind you selling these?”
Schreiber shrugged. “That will not be a problem.”
“Really?” I looked around at the metal walls. “Because the few Hyenas I’ve known have been kind of territorial.”
The old man wagged a finger. “It was uncooperative to start with. Until we lobotomised it.”
“You did what?” Something cold settled in my stomach.
“We dug out its biological substrate. Growing another in a tank. When ready, we will insert new brain and sell ship to highest bidder.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Is business, that’s all.” He placed his hand on the top of one of the cylindrical packing cases. “Now, you want to buy cores or not?”
I caught movement in my peripheral vision. Schreiber wasn’t alone. He was too smart to operate without protection. I counted two armed figures in the shadows beneath the ship, but a prickle at the back of my neck warned me there were probably more behind me, where I couldn’t see them.
“How much are you asking?” I wondered how many crosshairs were currently focused on my head. Thinking about it made my scalp itch.
“A hundred and twenty thousand. Each.”
“Jesus, I could buy four new ones for that price.”
“Not on this planet you couldn’t.”
“I simply don’t have that kind of money.”
Schreiber smiled like a shark. “I suspected you did not. However, I am a generous man. I would be willing to exchange both cores for one of your cruisers. After all, why go to the trouble and expense of operating two? Really, I would be doing you a favour.”
I felt my lip curl. “If I gave you one of my ships, you’d kill it.”
“We would install a new personality.”
“Forget it.”
Schreiber spread his hands. The servos in his artificial arm whined like aggrieved mosquitoes. “Captain, be reasonable. Surely it would be better to continue your journey with one ship than be marooned here with two?”
I glanced around at his hired muscle. As far as I could see, there were four of them, and all had been heavily augmented. In the gloom, they looked more mechanical than human.
“It’s not going to happen.”
Schreiber smiled. “Do you think I want to be stuck here forever? I have something you need, and you have something I want. We can trade like grown-ups.” He paused, scratching his neck where beard met collar. “Or I can simply take both cruisers from you.”
I let my hand drop to the pistol on my leg. “I wouldn’t advise that.”
Schreiber’s smile turned apologetic. “You should understand, the first question in business is not, ‘Can I do this?’ but rather, ‘Who will stop me?’” He spread his hands. “And if you had more people, you would have brought them.”
He twitched his fingers and his accomplices raised their weapons.
“This won’t work,” I told him.
“Oh, but I think it will,” Schreiber said. “Because now we are going to make a simple trade. You give me the access codes to your Carnivores.”
“And in return?”
“I may decide to let you live.”
I looked Schreiber in his artificial eye and said, “May?”
The old cyborg scratched at his white beard. He watched the red dots of his men’s targeting lasers play against the fabric of my coat. “It depends on how cooperative you are.”
A shadow eclipsed the stars. I said, “I think it’s only fair to warn you I have backup.”
Schreiber looked up and frowned. “Is that—?”
“Her name’s Trouble Dog, and she’s very protective. But she isn’t very patient, so I suggest you all put your guns down and your hands on your heads.”
Schreiber gave a snort. He was a negotiator, used to bluffs and gambits. “What are you going to do, launch a torpedo? The blast would kill you too.”
I took a step toward him. “That ship once assassinated a Conglomeration admiral on the bridge of his Scimitar by firing a defensive cannon round through a hole no wider than your eye. Trust me, she could turn you all into mulch in an instant, and I wouldn’t even get blood on my boots.”
Schreiber opened his mouth to protest, but my ear bud chirruped, and I held up a finger.
“Yes?”
“Captain, I think I have solved fuel problem.”
“That’s great, Nod. Where are you?”
“Hound of Difficulty can guide you.”
“So we don’t need these fuel cores?”
“No.”
“Thank you, Nod.” I took my finger out of my ear and smiled at the Dutchman. “It seems things have changed,” I said.
He had only heard my half of the conversation, but his cheeks were flushed and his fists clenched. “It appears so.”
“I’m going to turn around and walk away now, okay?”
“As you wish.”
“And you’re not going to try anything stupid?”
His lips compressed into a hard line. He was a man who’d had a golden ticket dangled in front of his eyes, a lion that’d thought he had a gazelle by the throat, only to find his teeth snapping shut on empty air.
I turned and started walking. My shoulders cringed, half-expecting the thump of a bullet. I had taken six steps and was just starting to relax when I heard a swish, followed by an impact. A gun clattered to the floor. I didn’t look back.
“You’re safe,” the Trouble Dog said in my ear.
“What happened?”
“One of Schreiber’s goons tightened his finger on his trigger. I detected the current change in the servos of his hand, so I took him out.”
“Is he dead?”
“No, but he’s going to need a new mechanical arm. And probably a leg, too.”
“Thank you.”
“It was my absolute pleasure.”
“Any sign of pursuit?”
“No, although Schreiber’s shaking his fist and hurling some choice Dutch curses my way. Would you like me to translate the best of them?”
I smiled. “No thanks, I think I’ll pass.”
“That’s a shame.” The ship sounded genuinely amused. “He really has the most inventive vocabulary.”
* * *
Following her guidance, I made my way around scrap piles and through starship graveyards until I reached a crashed vessel of unfamiliar design. Nod stood just inside a crack in the hull. The finger-petals around one of its faces beckoned me inside.
“Excellent find,” it said.
“Is it a core?”
“Better.”
Nod led me through the low-ceilinged interior until we came to a low, kidney-shaped chamber containing an object resembling a half-slagged iron ingot.
“There,” it said.
I walked around it in an awkward crouch. “What is it?”
“Printer.”
“We have printers.”
“Not printer like this. Old, old design. Prints fuel.”
“From what?”
“From anything.”
“So, if we filled one of the shuttle bays with scrap…”
“We would have enough to print many cores. Never need refuel again. Just add more matter when supplies run low.”
“So how come nobody else has taken it?”
“This technology old. Doubt humans recognise for what it is.”
“But you do?”
“Druff have been engineers for millennia. Crewed all ships. Know all equipment.”
I leaned forward and threw my arms around its closest neck. “Nod, you’re a genius.”
“Only one problem, Commodore.”
“And what’s that?”
Two of Nod’s faces swivelled warily from side to side. “Getting it out of here in one piece.”
It had a point. The alien printer must have massed at least a tonne. Not only were we going to have to find a way to extract it, but also avoid the attentions of the other scavengers while we did so. I had no doubt that once they saw us moving the object, they’d quickly take a speculative interest in it.
“The Dog’s overhead. Anyone messing with us is going to be sorry.”
Nod dipped a head. “Am not reassured.”
“Why not? You know she’s good at what she does.”
“What she does is kill things. Do not want to be standing next to those things when she kills them.”
* * *
I summoned a cargo pallet from the shuttle, and we loaded the alien printer onto it. Braced on four legs and lifting with the other two, Nod turned out to be a lot stronger than I’d suspected.
We were almost done when a trio of scavengers surrounded us. I’d half expected Schreiber and his cohorts to take another crack at us, but these three were different people. Two of them were men, covered in tattoos and piercings, bare-chested and clad in filthy dungarees. The third was a woman. She was obviously in charge, and they were her muscle. She didn’t speak my language, but what she wanted was clear from her tone and gestures. We were hauling something from the scrap heap; she didn’t know what it was, but if we thought it was valuable enough to take, she wanted to get her hands on it.
The alien printer sat on the AG cargo pallet, ready to lift into the ship. The two male scavengers were armed with improvised steel axes, the woman with a military surplus plasma rifle. She had bright orange hair and a lightning flash crudely tattooed across her face, and wore an old flight jacket that made me wonder if she’d once been a crewman on a ship that had become stranded here. Maybe she’d even been a captain like me, and the two lunkheads to either side her security officers. Perhaps if events had shaken out differently, it would have been me standing in her place, trying to eke out a living as the queen of this garbage-pile world. Maybe, given the predations of the Marble Armada, she represented the future—not just for me, but also for the whole human race. Denied space travel, we’d have no choice but to exist as rats in the walls of the Fleet’s sterile empire, picking through the remains of our once-great technologies for bright and shiny scraps.
The woman’s lip curled; she said something, and gestured with her plasma rifle. The men on either side of her tightened their grips on their heavy looking cudgels. The message was clear: hand over what you’re hauling or we’ll kill you. The trouble was that if I complied, I’d be stuck here just as firmly as they were.
For a second, I considered calling the ship. But she’d lowered herself to the ground to retrieve the shuttle and wait for us to come aboard. We’d be dead before she could rise high enough to target these imbeciles with her defence cannons. Instead, I imagined what Alva Clay would have done in this situation. I had her pistol in my hand. Without hesitation, I brought it up and shot the woman in the face. The other two flinched aside. I caught one through the thigh, and the other through the chest. While they were writhing on the ground, I turned in a slow circle. As the gun barrel swept across the piles of trash surrounding us, I caught flickers of movement as other scavengers scrambled away. I didn’t know whether they were part of this ambush or simply curious onlookers. I’m sure some of them were children, but it didn’t matter. I fired a shot over their heads to keep them moving, and then motioned to Nod.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here while we can.”
* * *
By the time we reached the Trouble Dog, my hands had started to shake. I left Nod and his offspring to unload the new printer, and made my way quickly to my cabin, where I threw up in the sink.
Wiping my lips on the back of my hand, I caught my reflection in the mirror. A stranger stared back. The Sal Konstanz I knew would never have been capable of killing so easily. I remembered the extraordinary lengths to which I had gone to spare the lives of the would-be hijackers who’d tried to take my ship on Cichol, and the terrible guilt I’d felt after ordering the death of Preston’s father during our standoff in the Gallery—back when the universe made sense and moral scruples were more than just an expensive luxury. The face that looked back at me now belonged to a harder woman. A woman who’d lost people she’d cared about; a woman who’d had to make tough decisions and burn important bridges. When Alva had been alive, I would have looked to her to get me out of a violent situation. But with her gone, I’d had to take the initiative myself. Instead of agonising over the decision, I’d simply acted as she would have done, and taken responsibility for my own salvation. By saving Nod’s life, as well as my own, I’d discharged my duty as its commanding officer. So, why was I left feeling empty and hollow, as if I’d lost some essential part of myself?
I flopped onto my bunk and curled into a foetal position.
When my maternal great-great-grandmother, Sofia Nikitas, founded the House of Reclamation, she’d done so through a sincere desire to help people. Inspired by the vanished Hearthers, she’d set up the organisation as a rescue service for lost or damaged starships, with a motto that read: Life Above All.
Was that the problem? Was I feeling this numbness because I’d violated the aims of an organisation that no longer existed; or was it simply that, in some convoluted way, I felt as if I’d let down the ghost of the long-vanished family matriarch? I’d spent so much of my life being compared to her, by shooting a stranger in the face I felt as if I’d somehow failed to live up to her example. And yet, despite everything, a tiny part of me felt horribly proud of what I’d done.
I imagined what Alva would have said, had she been here. Probably something along the lines of, “Somebody tries to kill you, you kill them first.”
The image brought a bitter smile. Although we’d had our disagreements, I missed the hell out of her, and would have given almost anything to have her with me at that moment. Instead, I was going to have to continue to rely on myself. The Generality of Mankind might be falling apart, but I had people to look after, and a ship to keep flying.