The Night's Dawn Trilogy (81 page)

Erick Thakrar sat at an alcove table near the balcony window with two of his shipmates, Bev Lennon and Desmond Lafoe, and
their captain, AndrÉ Duchamp. The Catalina was near the top of the city levels, giving it a seventy-five per cent gravity
field, and a good view out into the cavern. Erick wasn’t impressed by what he could see. The axis was taken up by a hundred-metre
diameter gantry, most of which was filled by the thick black pipes of the irrigation-sprinkler nozzles. It was ringed at two
hundred and fifty metre intervals by doughnut-shaped solartubes that shone with a painful blue-white intensity. They lacked
the warm incandescence of an Edenist habitat’s axis light-tube, which was dramatically illustrated by the plants far below.
The cavern floor’s grass shaded towards the yellow, while trees and shrubs were spindly, missing their full complement of
leaves. Even the fields of crops were hungry looking (one reason why imported delicacies were so popular and profitable in
all asteroid settlements). It was as though an unexpected autumn had visited the tropical climate.

The whole cavern was cramped and clumsy, a poor copy of a bitek habitat’s excellence. Erick found himself thinking back to
Tranquillity with nostalgia.

“Here he comes,” AndrÉ Duchamp muttered. “Be nice to the
Anglo
, remember we need him.” The captain came from Carcassonne, a die-hard French nationalist, who blamed the ethnic English in
the Confederation for everything from failed optical fibres in the starship’s flight computer to his current overdraft. At
sixty-five years old his geneered DNA maintained his physique in the lean mould which was the staple criterion of the space
adapted, as well as providing him with a face that was rounded all over. When AndrÉ Duchamp laughed, everyone in the room
found themselves smiling along, so powerful was the appeal; he had the same emotional conviction as a painted clown.

Right now he put on his most welcoming smile for the man sidling anxiously up to the table.

Lance Coulson was a senior flight controller in Tehama’s Civil Astronautics Bureau; in his late fifties, he lacked the political
contacts necessary to gain senior management ranking. It meant he was stuck in inter-system tracking and communications until
retirement now; that made him resentful, and agreeable to supplying people like AndrÉ Duchamp with information—for the right
price.

He sat at the table and gave Erick Thakrar a long look. “I haven’t seen you before.”

Erick started recording his implant-enhanced sensorium directly into a neural nanonics memory cell, and ordered a file search.
Image: of an overweight man, facial skin a red tinge of brown from exposure to the cavern solartubes; grey suit with high
circular collar, pinching the neck flesh; light brown hair, colour-embellished by follicle biochemical treatments. Sound:
of slightly wheezy breathing, heartbeat rate above average. Smell: sour human sweat, beads standing out on a high forehead
and the back of chubby hands. Lance Coulson was nerving himself up. A weakling ruffled by the company he kept.

“Because I haven’t been here before,” Erick replied, unyielding. His CNIS file reported a blank, Lance Coulson wasn’t a known
criminal. Probably too petty, he thought.

“Erick Thakrar, my systems generalist,” AndrÉ Duchamp said. “Erick is an excellent engineer. Surely you don’t question my
judgement when it comes to my own crew?” There was just enough hint of anger to make Lance Coulson shift round in his seat.

“No, of course not.”

“Excellent!” AndrÉ Duchamp was all smiles again; he clapped Lance Coulson on the back, winning a sickly smile, and pushed
a glass of Montbard brandy over the scratched aluminium slab to him. “So what have you got for me?”

“A cargo of micro-fusion generators,” he said softly.

“So? Tell me more.”

The civil servant rolled the stem of his glass between his thumb and finger, not looking at the captain. “A hundred thousand.”
He slid his Francisco Finance credit disk across the table.

“You jest!” AndrÉ Duchamp said. There was a dangerous glint to his eyes.

“There were… questions last time. I’m not doing this again.”

“You’re not doing it this time at that price. If I had that kind of money do you think I would be here crawling to a tax-money
leech like you?”

Bev Lennon put a restraining hand on Duchamp’s shoulder. “Easy,” he said smoothly. “Look, we’re all here because money is
tight, right? We can certainly pay you a quarter of that figure in advance.”

Lance Coulson picked up his credit disk and stood up. “I see I have been wasting my time.”

“Thank you for the information,” Erick said in a loud voice.

Lance Coulson gave him a frightened look. “What?”

“That’s going to be enormously useful to us. How would you like to be paid? Cash or commodities?”

“Shut up.” “Sit down, and stop fucking about.”

He sat, checking the rest of the tables with twitchy glances.

“We want to buy, you want to sell,” Erick said. “So let’s stop the drama queen tactics, assume you’ve shown us what a tough
negotiator you are, and we’re all shitting bricks. Now what’s your price? And be realistic. There are other flight controllers.”

He overcame his agitation for just long enough to shoot Erick a look of one hundred per cent hatred. “Thirty thousand.”

“Agreed,” AndrÉ Duchamp said immediately. He held out his Jovian Bank disk.

Lance Coulson gave a last furtive glance round before shoving his own disk in AndrÉ’s direction.

“
Merci
, Lance.” AndrÉ’s grin was scathing as he received the datavised flight vector.

The four crewmen watched the civil servant retreating, and laughed. Erick was congratulated for calling the other man’s bluff,
Bev Lennon fetching him half a litre of of imported Lübeck beer.

“You had me panicking!” the wiry fusion specialist protested as he dropped the tankards down on their table.

Erick took a sip of the icy beer. “I had me panicking.”

It was going well, they accepted him, reservations (and he knew some still had them) were fading, breaking down. He was becoming
one of the lads.

Along with Bev Lennon and Desmond Lafoe, the ship’s node specialist, a brawny two-metre-tall bear of a man, Erick spent the
next ten minutes talking trivia while AndrÉ Duchamp sat back with a blank expression reviewing the vector he had just bought.

“I don’t see any problem,” the captain announced eventually. “If we use a Sacramento orbit to jump from we can rendezvous
any time in the next six days. Fifty-five hours from now would be the ideal…” His voice trailed off.

Erick turned to follow his gaze. Five men wearing copper-coloured one-piece ship-suits walked into the Catalina bar.

Hasan Rawand caught sight of AndrÉ Duchamp as he was about to sit at the bar. He tapped Shane Brandes, the
Dechal
’s fusion engineer, on the side of his arm and flicked a finger in the direction of the master of
Villeneuve’s Revenge
. His other three crew-members, Ian O’Flaherty, Harry Levine, and Stafford Charlton, caught the gesture and turned to look.

The two crews regarded each other with mutual hostility and antagonism.

Hasan Rawand walked over to the window booth table, his crew right behind him. “AndrÉ,” he said with mock civility. “So nice
to see you. I trust you have brought my money. Eight hundred thousand, wasn’t it? And that’s before interest. It has been
seventeen months after all.”

AndrÉ Duchamp gazed straight ahead, his hands cupping his beer tankard. “I owe you no money,” he said darkly.

“I think you do. Cast your mind back; you were carrying plutonium initiators from Sab Biyar to the Isolo system.
Dechal
waited in Sab Biyar’s Oort cloud for thirty-two hours for you, AndrÉ. Thirty-two hours in stealth mode, with freezing air
and iced food, pissing into tubes that leaked, not even allowed a personal MF player in case the navy ships picked up its
electronic emission. That’s not nice, AndrÉ; it’s about as close as you can get to a Confederation penal colony without being
shot down to the surface in a drop capsule. We waited for
thirty-two hours
in the stinking dark for you to show so we could take the initiators in, doing your dirty work for you and carrying all the
risk. And when we got back to Sab Biyar what did I find?”

AndrÉ Duchamp grinned round at his own crew, trying to brazen it out. “I’m sure you’ll tell me,
Anglo
.”

“You went to Nuristan and sold the initiators to one of their naval contractors, you Gallic
shithead
! I was left trying to explain to the Isolo Independence Front where their nukes had gone, and why their poxy rebellion was
going to fail because they hadn’t got the fire-power to back up their demands.”

“You can show me the contract?” AndrÉ Duchamp asked mockingly.

Hasan Rawand glared down at him, lips compressed in rage. “Just hand over the money. A million will see you clear.”

“To hell with you,
Anglo
filth. I, AndrÉ Duchamp, owe nobody money.” He stood up and tried to barge past the
Dechal
’s captain.

It was the move Erick Thakrar was waiting for and dreading. Sure enough, Hasan Rawand shoved AndrÉ Duchamp back in the booth.
The back of the older captain’s knee struck a seat which almost tipped him off balance. He recovered and launched himself
at Hasan Rawand, fists flying.

Desmond Lafoe rose to his feet drawing a frantic gasp from Ian O’Flaherty when his size, weight, and strength became apparent.
Huge hands reached forward, and Ian O’Fla-herty was jerked off his feet. He kicked out wildly, toecap striking Desmond Lafoe’s
shin. The giant merely grunted, and then threw his victim across the room. He landed awkwardly on one of the aluminium tables,
his shoulder taking the brunt of his momentum before he crashed down backwards onto a pair of chairs.

Erick felt a hand close around the neck fabric of his ship-suit. It was Shane Brandes who was hauling him out of the booth;
a forty-year-old with a bald head and small gold earrings, smiling with ugly anticipation. The unarmed combat file in Erick’s
neural nanonics went into primary mode. His instinctive thought routines were superseded by logic-based patterns, calculating
inertia and intent with an ease surpassing any kung fu master. Nanonic supplement boosted muscles powered up.

Shane Brandes was surprised how easy it was to pull his opponent out of the booth. Gratification became alarm when he kept
on coming. Shane had to backstep to keep balance, his own neural nanonics assuming command of his mass positioning. He cocked
a fist back to smash into Erick’s face, only to have a nanonic warning blare in his mind as Erick’s forearm swung up with
incredible speed. His punch was blocked, arm chopped painfully to one side. A furious kick to Erick’s groin—his knee nearly
fractured from the impact of the counter-kick. He reeled to one side, banging into Harry Levine and Bev Lennon, who were locked
together.

Erick slammed an elbow into Shane’s ribs, hearing bone break. He let out an agonized grunt.

The unarmed combat file said that speed was essential, take out your opponent as soon as possible. His neural nanonics analysed
Shane’s movements, the half twist as he clutched at his ribs, bending over. The motion was projected two seconds into the
future. Interception points were computed. A list materialized in his consciousness, and he selected a blow that would cause
temporary incapacitation. His right leg shot out, booted foot aiming for a patch of empty air. Shane’s head fell into it.

A threat assessment sub-routine shifted his peripheral senses into priority focus. AndrÉ Duchamp and Hasan Rawand were still
battering away at each other on the side of the booth’s table. Neither was inflicting much damage in the confined space.

Harry Levine had got Bev Lennon into a head lock. The two of them were on the floor, squirming round like theatrical wrestlers,
sending chairs spinning. Bev Lennon sent a flurry of elbow jabs into Harry Levine’s stomach, attempting to knock his navel
into his spine.

Stafford Charlton obviously had a boosted musculature. He was standing in front of Desmond Lafoe, landing blow after blow
on the big man, arms moving with programmed efficiency. He had almost doubled up from the pain, his right arm hung limply,
the shoulder broken. Blood ran out of his flattened nose.

Ian O’Flaherty rose behind Desmond Lafoe, berserk loathing contorting his face, a pocket fission blade in his right hand.
With his enhanced retinas on full amplification, the yellow haze emitted by the activated blade dazzled Erick for an instant.
The threat assessment sub-routine activated the defensive nanonic implant in his left hand. A targeting grid of fine blue
lines flipped up across his vision. A rectangular section flashed red, and wrapped itself around Ian O’Flaherty, adapting
to his movements like elastic thread.

“Don’t!” Erick Thakrar shouted.

Ian O’Flaherty had already raised the blade high above his head when the shout came. In his wired state he probably wouldn’t
have obeyed even if he heard. Erick saw the muscles in his lower arm begin to contract, the knife quivered as it started on
its downward slash.

The neural nanonics program reported that even with boosted muscles Erick couldn’t reach Ian O’Flaherty in time. He made his
decision. A small patch of skin above the second knuckle of his left hand dilated, and the implant spat out a dart of nanonic
circuitry, barely as large as a wasp stinger. It struck the bare skin of Ian O’Flaherty’s neck, penetrating to a depth of
six millimetres. The fission blade had already descended twenty centimetres towards Desmond Lafoe’s broad back. As soon as
it sensed it was buried inside the flesh, and its momentum was spent, the dart sprouted a fur of microscopic filaments. They
quested round on a preprogrammed search pattern for nerve strands, tips wriggling between the close-packed honeycomb of cells.
Ganglions were located, and the sharp filament tips forced their way through gossamer membranes sheathing the individual nerves.
At this time the knife had descended twenty-four centimetres. Ian O’Flaherty’s right eyelid gave an involuntary twitch at
the small sting from the dart’s entry. The dart’s internal processor analysed the chemical and electrical reactions flashing
along the nerves; it began to broadcast its own signal into the brain. His neural nanonics detected the signal at once, but
the circuitry was powerless to help, it could only override natural impulses originating from within the brain.