Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (35 page)

‘There’s nothing personal in it. The same as when the miners attacked us down by the volcano.’

‘We’re not animals.’

‘Isn’t that exactly what slaves are? Men have choices, slaves don’t. Protests from us are no more worth listening to than a swine squealing as it’s hauled to the abattoir.’ Carter looked meaningfully at Duncan. ‘That is, as long as you accept being a slave. If you’ve changed your mind about that, maybe you want to throw in with me after all.’

‘I don’t want to get Willow killed. And what the hell are we going to do about Adella?’

‘We’re not children anymore. Everyone in the sky mines can make their own minds up. Willow and Adella too. A man’s got to die of something, right? That’s what my old man used to say. Those Vandian bastards, they’ve stolen more than our bodies. They’ve snatched our hope. Made us think we’re just possessions to sweat and die at their pleasure. If the road home is all that’s out there, I’ll take my end on it. Chased, pursued, hunted. At least it’ll be the death I’ve chosen, not getting my skull cracked by another poor sod starved into desperation by the Vandians. So are you in, or out, Mister Landor?’

‘We’ll see,’ said Duncan. ‘We’ll see.’ He looked up at the sky. Waves of enemy transporters broke through the filthy clouds, a web of red smoke trailing in their wake, too many invaders for their own aircraft to discourage. ‘I reckon the hitters on the back of those birds are fixing to solve all our problems for good.’

Jacob’s hand rested on the window of the hansom cab as it pulled through the crowded streets of Talekhard. Sheplar Lesh was right about one thing. With the pungent smell of the bard in their carriage, the first order of the night when they got back to their cheap hotel would be to get the traveller a bath and avail themselves of the establishment’s laundry service. With the evening approaching, more aircrews spilled into the street; merchants and travellers the worse for wear after their carousing. The two horses up front shifted slowly through the press of carriages and carts, oblivious to the siren cries of women leaning from doxy house windows, yelling obscene suggestions to the crowds below. Jacob sat next to Sariel, the vagrant humming and tapping his walking staff on the cab’s floor. Khow was lost in thought opposite, next to Sheplar, who was doing his best to ignore the tramp. A hatch opened in the cab behind the gask’s head, the cabbie on their driving step bending down to speak. ‘Roads are thick with drays heading for the warehouses. Your hotel is only at the end here. It’ll be quicker for you to get out and walk the rest of the way. Could take me ten minutes to push through this traffic.’

Jacob poked his head out of the open window. Carts piled with barrels and bales stood stalled all the way up the street, the impatient clatter of hooves on cobbles as traffic waited along the boulevard. Jacob spied their cheap lodgings ahead. A gang of street vendors weaved through the carts, beseechingly lifting trays of food and knickknacks up to captive riders and wagoners. Jacob saw what he wasn’t meant to, as well. Three men sitting at a table outside the eatery next to their hotel, incongruous among the families seated around them, gossiping over evening meals. A carriage had drawn up down the street, its driver feeding his two horses and waving away a prospective passenger trying to buy a ride. The canvas bundle tied up top, just the right length to hide rifles. The two men pretending to window-shop at the general store opposite.
Six outside the hotel.
How many inside, to close the trap?
‘Take the turning over there,’ said Jacob, pointing to the next street corner. ‘We’re not going back to our rooms. Head for the airfield.’

‘What is it?’ asked Sheplar.

‘A feeling in my water,’ said Jacob. He patted his pocket, touching the tickets Sheplar had negotiated for them in the packed lobby. ‘There’s an ambush waiting for us outside our hotel. That strange radio set we found on the guardsman… I don’t think the receiving set is limited to Major Alock’s hands. I reckon there’s one in town, too.’

‘Enemies in front of us, enemies behind,’ said Sheplar. ‘This conspiracy runs larger than a single corrupt regiment.’

‘Which explains why the weight of numbers is against us,’ said Khow, holding up his abacus machine. ‘The branches of the fractal tree are far narrower than they should be.’

‘Do you speak of skels, Your Grace?’ said Sariel.

‘Maybe their common pattern equivalent,’ said Jacob.

‘What do the tardy-gaited mites want?’

‘They’ll settle for taking the money in our pack and putting a bullet in our heads,’ said Jacob. ‘But it’s the
why
of it that’s bothering me. If I could see how whoever is behind this is benefiting from the situation, I’d be a lot more comfortable about taking them on.’

‘I can see you are a master strategist, Your Grace,’ said Sariel. ‘You realise the need to understand your enemy and battlefield to triumph. I once served in the staff of the Grand Marshal Fourou. That courageous officer won many battles with the assistance of my suggestions.’

‘And what fount of advice do you have for us here, smelly one?’ asked Sheplar.

‘That you must never engage an enemy on his terms, only on your own,’ said Sariel.

‘The best victory is the one you never have to fight,’ added the gask.

Jacob checked his pistols.
That may not be in my gift.

As the cab halted by the field staff at the edge of the flats, Jacob leant out of the door to talk to the men. ‘We need to get to one of the shuttles taking cargo up to the
Night’s Pride
.’

‘Over there,’ said a field hand, pointing to a line of stubby tri-wing planes, their nose cones open while wagons unloaded stacks of wooden crates in front. ‘Those are the tugs from the
Night’s Pride
. Not much comfort on a Tourian bird, though. She’s no liner up there.’

‘We require range,’ said Sheplar. ‘Not vases with flowers in our cabins.’

‘You’ll have a long journey with her,’ said the field hand. He indicated a series of buildings off to the side. ‘Pull up over there for a customs’ check before you leave.’

‘We’re going out, not coming in,’ said Jacob.

‘That’s what I told the bosses,’ shrugged the field worker. ‘Most months they don’t give a turd about what’s coming in, either. Why do you think the traffic’s so backed up in the city? These extra checks are throttling operations. We’ll be working into the night at this rate, and not with any extra money for us, of course.’

‘How long has the port been operating like this?’

‘Only started today. Maybe the prefecture wants extra paperwork to justify the revenue service’s next pay rise.’

‘That’ll be a clerk’s idea, all right,’ said Jacob, watching the official turn and walk towards the wagons drawing up behind them. Jacob spoke to the cabbie on the coach step. ‘Head straight for those triplanes over there.’

The man on the footstep grunted and with a flick of the reins, the small black carriage rolled across the salt flats, kicking up a trail of dust from its wheels.

‘Ah, that’s the spirit, Your Grace,’ said Sariel. ‘Not a fig for bureaucracy! I have travelled through a thousand countries and never once seen a line painted across the dirt delineating where one state ends and another starts. Nor found entry duties written in the grass of the meadows where I wandered.’

‘It’s coincidences I don’t care for,’ said Jacob. He could feel the wrongness of this, like a fist clenching around his heart. He sensed the desperation of the forces trying to murder him before he left the country. Someone didn’t want the expedition to succeed, and they were going to any lengths to stop it dead. No sooner had the cab halted outside the line of stubby transport planes and cargo wagons, than a rider caught up with them, his horse panting from the gallop from the customs house. ‘You there!’ he shouted at their cabbie. ‘Over to the buildings! Are you deaf? You can’t follow simple instructions?’

Jacob leaned out of the open window and snorted in derision. ‘Don’t take that tone of voice with us, sir. We’ve already had our papers cleared by the Mayor of Talekhard himself.’

‘What’s that, you say?’ The official drew his horse alongside. ‘Present them.’

‘Here they are,’ said Jacob. ‘A gask, a mountain pilot, a tramp and a pastor.’ As the custom man’s eyes widened seeing the passengers inside, Jacob slammed his door open, smashing into the official and sending his horse clattering back into a wagon. The wagon’s team of horses took fright and jolted forward. Shouting in anger, one of the wagon’s stevedores stumbled and dropped a crate. It smashed open on the ground below. Sariel hooted in approval at the mayhem.

Khow looked aghast as Jacob swung out to the dirt and booted the struggling officer in the gut as he attempted to get to his feet. ‘Manling, have you taken leave of your senses?’

Jacob reached into the semi-conscious man’s duster and pulled it aside, revealing a shoulder holster with a pistol that he tugged out and tossed away across the salt flats. Then he lifted up the man’s leg and tapped his shoes. ‘Look at this… soft, expensive leather. Customs men wear stout boots with steel caps; at least, the ones who want to keep their toes attached to their feet do. Doesn’t take long checking piles of lading before a crate slips and falls on your boots. Only two breeds of wasps that hide their stings. Criminals and secret police.’

‘And with only a police badge’s width to be slipped between the two careers,’ announced Sariel, prodding the downed official with his walking staff. ‘Not much backbone in this doghearted clotpole. Fewer morals. I can tell.’

Jacob tossed their fare to the cabbie and slapped the nearest horse’s flank, sending the cab skittling away from the triplanes. He glanced up at the wagon and the cursing stevedores. The crate the men had dropped lay broken across the dusty ground, a spill of straw, and among the packing material… a pile of heavily greased rifles. The stamp on the broken crate was still legible: Landsman Weapon Works.
Gunrunners? I thought Sheplar had pegged these people as an upright crew?
A female pilot ducked out from under the nose of her transport plane, the same colourful tattoos on her arms as on the pair of brokers he’d seen earlier. She waved angrily at the stevedores manhandling her cargo. An idea flashed into Jacob’s mind. A way to expedite their exit and have the aircraft above ignore all commands from the ground to land its passengers. Jacob picked up the semi-conscious official and one of the oiled rifles, tossing gun and man to the ground in front of her as the pilot ran forward. ‘It’s not your wagoners’ fault! Where’s your export licence for these weapons?’

‘What are you saying?’ demanded the pilot.

‘I’m saying that the customs officers are going to require you to land that—’ Jacob’s hand jabbed up to the sky where the
Night’s Pride
circled ‘—and unload your cargo until you’ve secured valid export licenses and paid transfer taxes on every gun and bullet you’ve taken on board. And you better be able to prove that these crates aren’t going to be sold to any warring nation. The league has strict rules about exporting weapons into combat.’

‘War, war?’ the pilot repeated, her features growing crimson and incredulous. ‘Of course
war
. You think we plan to sell rifles to fishermen with broken nets to shoot fishes in the waves? Your government are thieves. Let us buy first from your friends’ factories, pay your officials their finder’s fee, then
problems
! Then
confiscate
? No!’

Jacob pointed to the man on the ground, jabbing a thumb back to the customs house. ‘He’s just the first of them. Be plenty more along in a minute.’ Jacob pulled out their stiff oblong boarding cards. ‘And we need to travel out. We haven’t got the money to spend on another month’s rent in Talekhard’s hotels while you trade paperwork and grease government palms here.’

‘On board!’ The pilot clapped her hands together. ‘You workers, load, load! We leave now.’ She sprinted down the line of triplanes, yelling instructions at the crews in their cockpits; pilots opening windows in glass bubbles above the landing doors, shouting to each other. Airmen came running down loading ramps to spin rotors into coughing life. Ribbons of smoke began trailing from their engines as stevedores struggled up the ramps with the last of the crates.

‘A magnificent performance, Your Grace,’ said Sariel, his face glowing with admiration. The vagrant stooped down to inspect the contents of the downed man’s pockets, flourishing a couple of paper notes as happily as if he discovered a small fortune. ‘I doubt if I could have done better myself, not if I was treading the boards of the Im­perial Theatre with the beautiful gaze of the Tsarina of Nera-ka on me as my motivation.’

‘You are not always a truthful man,’ Sheplar told Jacob, his tone a lot less admiring. He tried to snatch the stolen money off Sariel, but the tramp danced back out of reach.

‘I know how much fuel they burn landing one of those city-sized carriers and taking off again. They have to stay flying at high altitude if they’re to turn a profit this side of winter.’

‘In that much you’re correct,’ said Sheplar.

Jacob kicked one of the rifles left dropped on the ground. ‘And I thought you said the Tourians were an upright crew?’

‘Tourians, upright?’ laughed Sariel. ‘You are thinking of their southern neighbours, the Touresekians. These people are of base descent who would hawk their grandmother to a skel slaver if the price were right.’

‘Be quiet, smelly one,’ Sheplar swore. ‘Your mind’s been addled from drinking too much rotgut.’

Jacob dipped down and grabbed the lapels of the customs officers, pulling out one of his pistols and shoving it against the bruiser’s skull. ‘Who’re you working for?’

‘Go to hell!’

‘You’ve been told to look out for the three of us, haven’t you? Who set you up to it?’

‘You’re dead men, all of you.’

Jacob slapped the officer across the face with his pistol’s ivory-handled grip. ‘Quite possibly, but you’re heading to hell first.’

‘You won’t shoot me, churchman.’

Jacob cocked the pistol. ‘How sure are you of that?’

‘Go to hell.’