Her Majesty's Western Service (29 page)

To them
, Perry thought,
the frontier is romantic and exciting
.

How little they knew.

They stopped at an automat for coffee; quarters went in, the – amplified, fake? – sound of gears clanked, and coffee poured out in cups. The drink was light and fluffy by Service standards, where squadron messes and ship cooks vied with each other to brew the harshest, most burned and brutally caffeine-loaded coffee that they could.

But the clericals around them were treating the stuff like harsh `Dimers brew, and
Perry pretended to do the same. It did have caffeine, and he ordered another cardboard cup to walk with before they left. He was tired; the cardboard had insulated some of the damn boxcar’s shaking but not all of it, and between that and his uneasy nerves he hadn’t slept well. The coffee helped.

“So you escaped,” Johnny was saying as they walked through tenement streets on the other side of downtown, loosely following the river. It seemed to be a dockside district.

“He got me out,” Ahle motioned at Perry. “They were cashiering him already. He decided, what the hell.”

“Fuckin’ Service,” Perry put in for plausibility.

“Uh-huh. So what you looking to do now? Lost your ship, lost your ossifers, lost your crew.”

“Got my money.
Bank of Sonora. We’ll get my officers back.”

“Bust them out of Hugoton?”

“Do something,” said Ahle. “They’re my people. Might need a new crew before then. You looking for a job?”

Johnny thought for a moment.

“Maybe. Music’s good, but I could stand to be on a ship again.”

“You were in the hobo jungle. Where you headed?”

“North. Figure might be someone hiring in Minnie. Failing that, get a ride for the Hills.”

“The Black Hills,”
Ahle explained to Perry.

“So we’re going pirate, are we, Mr. Imperial Officer?” Johnny addressed
Perry directly for the first time in a while.

“They cashiered me. Got to go somewhere,” Perry said. “Gaol isn’t my idea of a fun time.”

“So off you run with this pirate lady.”

“Right.”

“Still uncertain, huh?”

“A bit,” said Perry.

“You’ll get to like it. Ahle, she’s Code through and through. Ethics, just like your Service rules. Don’t kill. Insurance companies cover it all anyhow. You’re not
really
doing a whole lot of harm. Even shoot up the bad pirates who are, rob the robbers.”

“Honorable pirates don’t rob other honorable pirates,”
Ahle said to Perry. “Anyone else is fair game. How do you
think
the Code got established.”

Perry wanted to say he didn’t give a damn for that publicity-driven Code bullshit, but it would have been tactless given the circumstances. Besides, this was a new aspect he hadn’t considered.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “How far are we from this place?”

“It’s on the docks,” said Johnny. “Just a few more minutes.”

Shady, but Perry had expected that; the sub-basement of his expectations had been mined the night before last, and he hadn’t expected anything above the most utterly dismal. The Green Gables was a vile bar on a street that overlooked the docks, a place where disreputable riverboatmen got wasted. The bouncer was a four hundred pound Samoan with a spiked club who eyed the three of them with utter contempt as they entered.

The inside was dark and greasy, and populated even at seven in the morning. Dockhands – pirates and thieves no doubt, too –
drinking whisky and beer. A couple of bindlestiff hoboes lounged in one corner.

Ahle
approached the bar with reasonable confidence.

“Johnny, what d’you want?” asked the bartender, a small mousy man with a face of stubble.

“I want a rye whisky. These two have business here.”

“Business, huh? What’ll you have?”

“Just a beer. Whatever you have,” said Ahle.

“I’m good,” said Perry.

Ahle elbowed him.

“Two of those,”
said Ahle. “One for him, too.”

The three sat down at the bar. Johnny downed his shot of rye, signaled for another.

“You owe me a buck besides this, Cap’n Ahle.”

“Have five and get out of here,” said
Ahle. “And pass the word. I got out, maybe I could use new crew.”

“Maybe I’ll see you in the Black Hills.” Johnny downed his second rye and headed off, probably – Perry thought – to spend the five bucks getting hammered elsewhere.

“So he showed you here, you two. What do you want?” asked the bartender.

“We wanted some drinks,”
Ahle said. “What’s it to you?”

“Don’t ordinarily see a nigger and a bitch together,” said the bartender indifferently. “Especially you, Cap
Ahle.”

Ahle
raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, yeah, we heard of you. Stole an Imperial line-class and t
hen got jacked yourself. Came over the wire last night. Looks like the nigger’s the same Imperial vice they got wanted for treason and a bunch a’ other shit.”

“You heard?”

The bartender poured their drinks, savoring it. Perry took a taste of his beer; awful crap. One sip was enough.

“Yeah,” said the bartender. “I hear things. So what do you want?”

Perry had been over the lines enough times to rote-memorize them. “We’re here for Josiah. Said to say we’re with Methuselah.”

The bartender looked sharply at them.

“With
who
?”

“Methuselah, I said. You want to get Josiah or not?”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“Hey, I ordered a fuckin’ beer two minutes ago!” one of the other patrons shouted as the bartender headed for the back room.

“You can wait,” the bartender yelled back. “This shit’s
important
.”

Joseph Capdepon the Second was a
heavy-set, burly man, with a full beard that was greying already; he was only thirty-three. His first act when the bartender shook him awake was to reach for the .44 revolver under his pillow. His second was to ask what was going on.

“Man comes in asking for Josiah,” said the ratty little bastard. Privately, Capdepon suspected him of palming money, but he didn’t have the evidence and Fred
was
good at keeping his yap shut. “From Methuselah. You said that was a big deal.”

Josiah from Methuselah. Fucking right that was a big deal.

“Drinks on the house to them while I get dressed.”

Ian Fleming. Bastard should have died years ago; Methuselah, the old man of the Bible, was fitting enough.

He had some idea of what the asshole might want, too. Anyone asking for Josiah specifically? That was good.

Meant he’d be rid of
them faster.

He rolled out of bed, pulled on pan
ts and boots and a kevlar vest underneath his coat. Any connection with that scheming bastard Fleming, you couldn’t be too careful around.

The bartender ushered them, drinks in hand, into a back room. It looked like an office;
there were old beer kegs stacked in one corner, but bills were pinned to a noticeboard on one wall, and the desk was crowded messily with papers.

Capdepon, a big
bearded man, came in through a door behind the desk and sat down at it. He eyed Ahle and Perry like they were poisonous snakes.

Perry eyed the bar owner – he was obviously that – the same way back.

“So. You’re from Fleming.”

“Maybe we are,” said
Ahle.

“Maybe you can prove it. There’s a rum bottle.”

A rum bottle?, Perry thought.

“The flask that rum came in,” said
Ahle, thinking faster.

Right. Nice silver flask. He hadn’t thrown that away. He fished in his bag for it and handed it across the desk into the bar-owner’s thick, grasping fingers.

Capdepon held it up to the single flickering light in the room. His eyes widened slightly as he inspected the crest on it, some thin engraving Perry had felt but not given a moment’s thought to.

“Miss
L. Shit. Fleming’s cashing in his chip with
her
?”

“Who the hell,” Perry asked, “are you talking about?”

“Miss L,” Capdepon repeated. There seemed to be relief in his voice. He reached down to his desk, opened a drawer, rummaged for a moment and pulled out an obsidian chip the size of a playing card. Pushed it across the desk at Perry, who took it. Engraved in the chip was lettering that might have been Viking runes but wasn’t English.

“What’s this?”

“Give it to her man. He knows what it is. You need transport?”

“We could use it,” said
Ahle. “Miss L, huh?”

You know thi
s woman, whoever she is
, Perry thought. Probably be time to ask questions later.

“
Barge going south in twenty minutes. Fred’ll get you on board. Get out of here.”

As they got up, so did Capdepon. “And tell that shady bastard Fleming, if you see him again, that I’m done with him. It’s over. Hopefully the spider will kick you right out on your asses. Give her my regards, by the way. Joseph Capdepon’s highest respects and regards.”

Now
that
, Perry thought, is interesting. Doesn’t give a damn for Fleming, but respects this woman in New Orleans like, unless he was very wrong, not much else.

Interesting person to meet
, he decided. New Orleans seemed like the wrong direction, but – given the context – probably not.

“Take us there,” he said. “I’ll pass it on. And to Fleming, too.”

Perry had seen – from ground-level and from two thousand feet – some of the pretty steamers that cruised up and down the Mississippi, colorful boats with names like
Delta Queen
,
Natchez XII
and
Belle of Cincinnatti
. Elegant vessels that played to wealthy people and tourists, and the
Memphis Darling
was absolutely not one of them.

She was a gunmetal-grey hulk whose
noisy engines belched thick smoke as she warmed up. An industrial ship whose only passenger class was steerage, and not even much of that; her main function seemed to be the pushing of a pair of barges, each her own eighty-foot length and twenty-foot width. They were loaded with grain, piled under tarpaulins that still spilled enough to keep a flock of circling birds interested.

“Tickets,” said a late-twenties crewman in a frayed white jacket. He was very good-looking,
with the fashionably slicked black hair of the younger generation. “We’ll be in Memphis tomorrow morning, Orleans midday after. Welcome aboard. Take any empty cabin.”

The cabins
were tiny two-bunk things that wouldn’t have gone amiss on an airship, except that they stank of old cigarette smoke. Perry wondered aloud just how
many
people seemed to be crammed into this ship.

“More than you figure. Migrant workers, traveling mechanics, probably a downed airshipman or two,” said
Ahle. “Everybody meets in New Orleans.”

Perry considered dumping his bags here – but no, this was the only change of clothes he had, and he wasn’t leaving some of the gadgets Fleming had given
him. Traveling workers probably included their share of thieves, and he wasn’t about to take chances.

Only about a half the
Darling
was devoted to passengers, two dozen cramped cabins below decks and a small common room with a cash bar. Most of the stern was devoted to cargo – crates stamped ‘Machine Parts’ – and powerful engines that resonated through the entire ship. Back above decks, they left the common room – a poker game was already starting up – and found a quiet space on the deck. For certain low values of quiet, as the engines bumped and shook.

A large, sleek passenger airship passed overhead, following the river south, and Perry wished he were aboard it.
Was
there a good reason they’d taken steerage on a freighter as opposed to train or airship, or at least one of the nicer riverboats? It wasn’t as though they didn’t have the money; Ahle was carrying several hundred, and Perry several thousand, dollars from MI-7’s operations account.

“Never did the ocean type of piracy,” mused
Ahle. “A couple hundred years ago, it might have been fun. White sails and cannon booming.”

“Robbing and stealing,” said Perry. “Not to mention murder.”

“True, those pirates never had a Code to speak of. And their victims never had insurance. You can tell the insured ships, you know. Most of them. Always a bit cocky. The other ones will jettison their cargo rather than be taken, and we’d let them go. The crews of the insured ones never cared. Owner-operators we tried to leave alone.”