Dark Run (20 page)

‘What am I even supposed to call you these days?’

‘Ichabod Drift will do fine,’ Drift replied levelly.

‘What sort of a name is that?’ Cruz snorted.

‘Less well known than the alternative,’ Drift pointed out. ‘You’re looking well,’ he added, in an attempt to steer the conversation elsewhere. It was true: Alexander Cruz still carried himself smoothly and easily despite the weight gain, and his skin held the tan of a man who got out into the comparatively benign light of Old Earth’s sun on a regular basis.

‘You look like shit,’ Cruz replied baldly, ‘but then if I’d just dropped a nuke in the Europans’ backyard I’d probably be crapping rocket fuel too.’

Drift suppressed a sudden urge to shiver. ‘That’s an interesting allegation.’

‘Don’t try to play me for a fool when you’re taking advantage of an old favour,
Drift
,’ Cruz snorted. ‘You’ve been off-radar for a decade or more. I thought you were dead; everyone thought you were dead. You’ve kept a low profile for a reason. You’d only show your face after all this time to someone who’d know it if you were out of options and desperate. You’ve got a ship to take you away from trouble, so I figure you just can’t risk making orbit in case you get snatched . . . which means you’re the one the Europans are looking for.’

Drift shrugged as lazily as he could manage. The man had always been smart even if not always sensible in his youth, and there was no point irritating him with further denials. ‘And is this common knowledge?’

‘No,’ Cruz said, rolling his eyes, ‘that’s why my team are staying outside and are not party to this conversation, because they owe you nothing and I can’t trust someone not to try getting a reward out of this. There’s a description out on your craft, of course, but given there must be a few thousand
Carcharodon
-class shuttles in the sky over North America at any one time, that won’t help the authorities much.’ His eyebrows lowered into a scowl. ‘I don’t know what you do for a living these days, and I don’t care. I have a business, and it’s
legal.
God help me, I owe you for Tantalus, but you are gone from here within an hour of the USNA relaxing the launch restrictions for this continent. Am I clear?’

‘Perfectly,’ Drift nodded. ‘Thank you.’

The portmaster pursed his lips. ‘Okay then. Don’t draw attention to yourselves: I won’t rat on you, but if the Justices come asking questions I’ll just be handing over the arrival log and I won’t be taking any chances to tip you off that they’re on their way.’

‘Understood,’ Drift assured him. Cruz stood there for another second or so, then nodded decisively.

‘Well, I have a spaceport to run.’ Those cold eyes met his once more. ‘Goodbye, Mr Drift. I hope not to see you again.’ He turned on his heel and strode away without another word, leaving Drift and his crew standing.

‘You saved his life?’ Jenna asked quietly as Cruz disappeared from view.

‘I did,’ Drift acknowledged.

‘Why?’

‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,’ Drift snorted. ‘And to be fair, I suppose it paid off in the end. This is the only spaceport we could expect to hide out in without difficult questions being asked.’ He exhaled noisily, pulling his thoughts into order. ‘Right. We’re down and we’re hidden, but we don’t know how long we’ve got before Alex gives us our marching orders. So, when the time comes for us to move, we need to have worked out exactly how we’re going to nail Nicolas Kelsier.’

There was a stunned silence for a second or so, and then the shouting started. Drift let it rise around him for a few moments before raising both hands and allowing some of Gabriel Drake’s tone to creep back into his voice.

‘
Quiet!
’

The added sharp edge worked; even Tamara Rourke closed her mouth again, although the look she shot him suggested that it was more from surprise than anything else. He let the sudden stillness hang in the air for a moment, just to ensure everyone’s attention was properly focused on him. Other people might have found that expectation daunting, but not Ichabod Drift. Wherever he’d been, whatever name he’d adopted, he’d always used the same tool to get by.

Words.

‘I’m taking it from people’s reactions that they don’t think going after Kelsier is a particularly sensible thing to do,’ he began. ‘Let me put this to you another way: going after Kelsier is the
only
thing to do. We’re a ship full of loose ends who know that he just tried to nuke Amsterdam. We were meant to die in the explosion and tie everything up neatly, but when he finds out what happened he’ll know we’re still alive, and then he will come hunting us.’

‘Hunting
you
,’ Kuai snorted, ‘he only knows you! As soon as I walk out that door . . .’

Drift shook his head, a humourless smile on his lips. ‘You’re not getting it. He hired us to do a job: sure, he picked me to do it because he thought I might trust him, or he had blackmail material on me, but for some fucked-up reason he
needed
that nuke to blow up in Amsterdam. He needed a crew who could do a difficult smuggling job, to schedule. He’s a careful man, which means he did his research, and
that
means he knows my crew. Odds are he knows all of us by name. And he already found us once.’

‘Yeah, when we weren’t trying to hide!’ Jia argued. ‘Why can’t we just let this blow over?’

‘Because it won’t,’ Drift answered bluntly. ‘You don’t know the man who hired us. I do. When he worked for the Europans and he was giving orders to people like Micah and me, he was very careful, very clever and
very
ruthless. That was when he was in a government with laws and rules and God knows what around him, even if he might have ignored some of them from time to time. You follow me? Now, imagine a man like that who only answers to
himself
, and ask yourself whether he’s going to have got any more forgiving.’ He looked over at Micah. ‘Would you agree?’

‘He’s a psychopath,’ Micah said simply, ‘and the main reason I left the FDU.’

‘Oh no, was he sending you somewhere you might have got shot at?’ Kuai asked nastily. Micah glowered at the mechanic.

‘Don’t talk like you’ve ever picked up a gun in anger, little man,’ the mercenary sneered. ‘You expect the
staatslieden
to think of the big picture, yes, because they won’t be doing the fighting themselves, but some of the orders coming out of ETRA . . .’ He tailed off, shaking his head.

‘Anyway, Jia, why are you suggesting hiding?’ Drift demanded, turning back to their pilot. ‘Someone cuts you up in the sky, you threaten to hit them so hard their children will be born bruised. Someone tries to
blow
you up and you’re just going to run away and say “Please sir, don’t do it again”?’

‘It’s not the same,’ Jia growled, but Drift could see that he’d stung her pride. He scanned the faces in front of him and settled on Rourke’s.

‘Tamara. You were calling for blood earlier. I’m with you.’ He spread his hands. ‘Are you still in?’

‘That was before I knew your history,’ Rourke said flatly. ‘How do I know I can trust you?’

‘You might note that we’ve worked together for eight years
without
me killing you, or killing anyone else who’s ever been on the crew, or even leaving someone to die,’ Drift shot back. ‘I mean, I didn’t have to come back and get you on Severus Prime, did I?’

‘No,’ Rourke admitted.

‘Or how about Benjamin, that time on Janus III? We didn’t leave him behind, did we?’

‘He died anyway.’

‘Yeah, but that’s because we couldn’t get him to the med facility fast enough,’ Drift countered. ‘We
tried
to help him.’ He waved his hands. ‘Look, I’m not saying this will be easy, but Kelsier will be expecting us to go to ground. He won’t be ready for us to come after him.’

‘That might be because it’s a stupid idea,’ Kuai retorted. ‘If he’s got resources to find us if we hide, he’s got resources to protect himself from one little ship. And how would we find
him
, anyway?’

‘Alex might know where to start,’ Drift shrugged. There was a moment’s silence.

‘Why,’ Rourke said carefully, ‘might Alex know?’

‘Alexander Cruz was the captain of the
Dead Man’s Hand
,’ Drift replied. ‘He was my main rival, I guess.’

‘That pompous little toerag was the Butcher of Dawnside?’ Apirana blurted out.

‘You’ve brought us to a starport run by
another
of Kelsier’s ex-privateers?’ Rourke demanded incredulously, cutting over the Maori. ‘How do you know he won’t sell us out?’

‘Firstly, because I had no choice,’ Drift replied honestly, ‘it was here or nowhere. Secondly, because he’s a stubborn bastard with an overinflated opinion of his own honour and he owes me a favour. Thirdly, because if he’d been planning to double-cross us he wouldn’t have been so hostile: he’s not trying to get us to stick around to trap us, he wants us gone before we make his life difficult. I’m inclined to oblige him.’

‘So am I,’ Kuai snorted. ‘Jia? Let’s go.’

The pilot looked sideways at her brother, but didn’t move.

‘Do you have a plan, Kuai?’ Drift pressed. ‘Do you know what you’re going to do next? Or are you just going to walk out into Atlantic City and hope you can find someone who needs a mechanic?’

‘That beats hoping to find a terrorist,’ Kuai retorted. ‘Jia?’

His sister’s eyes were fixed on Drift. He could see the uncertainty in her face, but there had always been a fire in the
Jonah
’s pilot which wasn’t present in her sibling. Drift wasn’t entirely sure if the Chinese had a word that exactly equated to ‘forgiveness’, but even if they did Jia didn’t know the meaning of it.

‘You think you can find him?’ she asked him, ignoring her brother.

Drift nodded. ‘Yes.’ He deliberately didn’t say how long it would take, but Jia’s arched eyebrow suggested she’d caught on.

‘You find out where he is by the time traffic’s cleared to break atmo,’ she said flatly, ‘
and
you have a plan for taking him down, or I’m finding something else to fly off this rock.’ Only now did she meet Kuai’s eyes: the mechanic said something sharp in Mandarin which Drift vaguely recognised to be a querying of her sanity, before Jia responded with an aggressive flurry he had no hope of understanding. He ignored the squabbling Changs and turned his attention to Micah.

‘Well?’ he asked. The Dutch mercenary grimaced.

‘I don’t like it.’

‘Fair play,’ Drift nodded, trying to ignore the sinking feeling he was starting to experience. He’d hoped Micah would be fully with him, but the disadvantage of having someone who could confirm Kelsier’s ruthlessness was that the other person would also be understandably unwilling to tackle the old bastard’s operation. ‘Would you feel safer looking for Kelsier through your gunsight or over your shoulder?’

Micah blinked. ‘Well . . .’

‘Risk deserves fair reward,’ Drift added, seeking the leverage he needed. ‘He’s got resources, and I’m intending to clean him out. Anything we take from him gets split seven ways, equally. After expenses.’

‘
Equal
shares?’ Micah’s eyebrows quirked before he drew them into a frown again. ‘You can’t just blind me with money, you know.’

‘You know him, at least by reputation,’ Drift pressed. ‘You know he’ll be coming after us anyway; you might as well get
paid
for fighting his goons, surely?’

Micah grimaced again, then sighed and shook his head. He nodded sideways at Jia, raising his voice to be heard over the argument. ‘Okay then, but I’m with her. You have a location and a plan by the time we need to move, and I’m with you. Otherwise I’ll take my chances alone.’

Drift nodded gratefully, then eyed the arguing Changs with some irritation. Still, he was well aware that his authority as Captain was wafer-thin at the moment and the last thing he wanted to do was annoy Jia by telling her to be quiet and causing her to side with her brother out of sheer contrariness, so he turned his attention to the three remaining members of what was still at least nominally his crew.

‘Jenna?’ He grimaced, not needing to feign reluctance at the thought of her leaving. ‘I know you haven’t been with us long, but—’

‘I’ve got nowhere else to go,’ she answered, cutting him off. ‘You picked up a drunk girl and gave her a ride and a job instead of robbing her or . . . worse.’ She attempted a smile, although it was shaky and half-formed. ‘Just try not to get me killed.’

Drift smiled, the same reassuring grin which had assured many a wary trader of his honesty. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’ To his right, the squabbling in Mandarin had subsided, with Kuai wearing the sulky expression of someone who’d lost an argument. Which was, in fairness, exactly what Drift had been counting on: if the mechanic felt the need to ‘look after’ his little sister then he’d hardly abandon her if she was heading off into danger. And thinking of danger . . .

He turned to look at Apirana, trying not to let his unease show on his face. ‘You’re pretty distinctive, big man. Might find it hard to hide.’

Apirana just nodded, lips tight and face blank. Drift waited for a further reaction, but none came.

Except from Jenna.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ the young slicer sighed. ‘Captain, Apirana is sorry he let his temper get out of control and he wants to remain part of the crew, otherwise he’d be off the ship already.’ She turned and addressed the big Maori, whose expression had rapidly slipped into ‘stunned’. ‘Apirana, the Captain wants you to stay or he’d have ordered you off the ship already, but neither of you are prepared to say anything unless you can work out what the other one intends, and goddamnit both of you suck at this!’

The shocked silence after Jenna’s outburst was broken only by a snigger from, of all people, Tamara Rourke. Drift glared at her, then briefly at Jenna, then set himself and faced Apirana again.

‘You want to stay?’

The Maori’s mouth worked as though more words were trapped behind his lips, but the only one which emerged was a vaguely embarrassed, ‘Yeah.’

Drift felt his guts get a little less fluttery. He’d honestly had no idea what the big man’s intentions were; Apirana’s emotions were usually so clear that the close-faced, silent Maori had quite thrown him. But if he was willing to stay, that meant he wouldn’t be wandering around Atlantic City and sticking out like a sore thumb . . .