Safe Passage

  Safe Passage

  Black Flag, book 1

  By Rachel Ford

  Chapter One

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “we don’t have room.”

  “You had room five minutes ago,” I reminded him.

  But the captain of the Night Runner just shrugged, an unconcerned grin spreading across his weathered features. “You know how it goes. I got a better offer.”

  “I’ll pay more,” I insisted. “Name your price. Please, I need to get off of this rock.”

  “I don’t think you could match this one. And even if you could, I’d rather not piss off the people paying to keep you here.” Now, Captain Ebert’s expression hardened. “Which you didn’t mention, by the way, when we made our deal.”

  “Please,” I implored. “I’ve been here six months. I need to get back home.”

  But Ebert was unpersuaded. Neither my offers of emptying my savings nor my protests that he’d given his word made an ounce of difference. The captain brushed past me, ambling up the gangplank to his old freighter, and sealed it after him.

  Then, I heard the hum of the engine startup procedures, and had to back away before I ended up crispier than a side of hopper legs. I watched, fury and fear competing for supremacy, as the Night Runner blasted off. Another ship, another captain, another failed flight; it had been six months and countless tries since my “temporary” layover on Trel began.

  I cursed myself for having been such a fool. I cursed myself for taking the job in the first place, much less for having believed anything one of the Conglomerate’s pilots said. If I’d never taken the bank job, I wouldn’t be here. If I hadn’t gotten off the ship when we detoured so suspiciously on the way back, I wouldn’t be here. Delousing? God, I’m an imbecile. How could I have fallen for a story like that?

  Now, I was a prisoner in everything but name, a prisoner light years from civilization, stuck on a dusty rock in the middle of nowhere. Oh, the Conglomerate kept me well enough, I supposed. I had money for food and entertainment – what passed for it here, anyway. But I wasn’t a fool.

  Well, not all the time, anyway. There was a reason the Conglomerate cordoned me off from the rest of humanity. There was a reason they kept me on a planet they owned. And it had nothing to do with the feeble excuses they’d offered in those first weeks, when they still took my calls. It wasn’t a matter of an overtaxed fleet.

  I was the engineer behind the Conglomerate’s new Deltaseal bank security. It was a masterpiece, the first and only of its kind: an integrated combination of digital checks and physical balances, that incorporated all the best of contemporary security – the high-tech locks and biometric scanners – with the best of more traditional technology – armed battle bots and the highest end old-fashioned vaults. To break it, you would need a team of vault crackers, code breakers and soldiers.

  Or me. That, of course, was the piece the Conglomerate feared. I knew Deltaseal’s secrets, because I built it. Not that I planned to use them. I didn’t violate my clients’ trust, even when I suspected they might work on the wrong side of the law. Since the business on Echo Prime, I took work where I could get it. A job was a job. But that didn’t mean my professional standards had lapsed, even if my judgement had.

  And this time, I’d miscalculated. My ask-no-questions policy that had seemed so smart at the time put me right in the Conglomerate’s crosshairs. The fact was, the only reason I was still drawing breath was because the system hadn’t been running long enough for them to kill off the brains behind it.

  But the grains in my hourglass were slipping away. I could feel it. My last so-called furlough paycheck had been a week and a half late. This week’s hadn’t come at all. A six-month had passed since Deltaseal went live. As they learned their new system – my system – my value to the Conglomerate was fading.

  It wouldn’t be long, now, before I had an unfortunate accident, or wound up the victim of a random and unexplained death on the streets of Trel. No one would ask questions. No one would care.

  And I’d be dead.

  I started as a hand touched my shoulder, and spun around. I found myself face-to-face with an old man. He cracked a gap-toothed smile. “Woah there, miss.”

  I blinked, feeling a little ridiculous. “Sorry, uh, can I help you?”

  “Maybe we can both help each other.”

  “Oh?”

  “I heard your conversation with Ebert there.”

  “Oh.” I could feel a scowl forming just at the memory.

  “Sounds like you need safe passage off this rock?”

  “That’s right.” I looked the old man up and down. He wasn’t particularly clean, and I got the impression that that was a matter of habit. I had taken him at first to be a freighter hand. Now, I reconsidered. “You got a way to get me out of here?”

  He grinned again. “See that ship over there?” He pointed to one of the freighters in port, some half a dozen ships from us. “That’s the Lady Louise. She’s my bird, alright.”

  It was a small ship, meant for cargo runs rather than human transport. But I wasn’t about to be picky. I’d have gone in a space capsule at this point, if someone had one available. I nodded eagerly. “I can pay,” I said. “I just need to get to another port. It doesn’t even matter where, as long as it’s in Union territory.”

  He nodded. “I don’t usually take passengers. But you seem like you’re in a pickle.” He shrugged. “Tell you what. I’ve got some business I’ve got to wrap up now. But, you know a place called Tully’s?”

  Tully’s was a little eatery and bar in Trel’s main settlement. It tended to attract shady clientele, but, then, so did everything on this planet. “I do.”

  “Good. Meet me there, say…oh, eighteen hundred hours. We’ll talk about getting you out of here.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  “Good. And I’m Captain Joe Billers, by the way. People call me Captain Joe, though.”

  “Kay,” I said, extending my hand, “Kay Ellis.”

  “Nice to meet you, Kay.” He grinned again. “I’ll see you tonight, then.”

  I was waiting before six o’clock rolled around at a table in the back of Tully’s. I’d spent the afternoon wondering in turns if I was walking into a trap or if my luck had finally changed. Was I getting out? Or was I getting fitted for a pine box?

  He arrived at two past, and threw a glance around the room. Spotting me, he flashed his signature grin, and ambled over. “Miss Kay,” he said, sidling into a seat next to me. “Good to see you again.”

  He was a little closer than I would have preferred, and the smell of tobacco and engine oil was strong. But I said, “You too, Captain Joe.”

  He turned in his seat, so that he was facing me, and I mirrored the movement. I wanted to be able to see his facial expressions. I still didn’t know if I was dealing with a Conglomerate contractor, or a good Samaritan, after all. “So, you’re in a bit of a bind?” he said.

  “I need a ride off world,” I said. “My last ship bailed while I was on layover, and I’m behind schedule.” It was all more or less true, though I’d skipped some of the more pertinent details.

  He nodded. “Bad bit of luck.”

  “Yeah.”

  He glanced me over, up and down, and I found something I didn’t like in that gap-filled grin; something I hadn’t noticed before; something that made my skin crawl. But in a minute, he’d turned to flag down a waitress. “What’s your special, honey?”

  “Fried hopper legs and cheese sauce.”

  I cringed. Of course it was hopper legs. Hoppers were just about the only thing that was native to this damned rock, and there were so many of them it seemed Trel was permanently under the curse of the second plague of Egypt.

  “Gr
eat. I’ll take a platter for two. And a Keldian sunrise, one for the lady and one for me.”

  “Coming right up.”

  “So,” he said, turning back to me. “Where are you headed?”

  His tone and expression were solicitous enough that I found myself relaxing a degree. Whatever I’d thought I’d seen, I decided, I had imagined. “Back to Union space.” Trel, like most Conglomerate territory, was just outside the established borders of the Union. It meant the law applied less here. Technically, all Union citizens were bound by Union laws, wherever we went. But with no one to enforce them, technicalities meant little. “It doesn’t much matter where, I just need to get to a port in Union space.”

  He nodded. “You got family there?”

  The question surprised me. “A brother.” It didn’t seem necessary to mention that Jake and I hadn’t spoken in five years.

  “No husband?”

  I blinked. “What?”

  He moved a little closer and lowered his voice. “Can’t imagine a fine woman like you, sleeping alone at night.”

  I pushed back in my own seat. “Captain Joe,” I said, “please. I’m just here to arrange a ride home.”

  He scooted to the edge of his seat, so that he was again near me. “All work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy.” He grinned. “We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

  Mercifully, the waitress reappeared now, a platter of sizzling hopper legs drenched in thick orange goo. “Here you go. Drinks are on the way.”

  “Thank you, love.”

  “Anytime, Joe.”

  My head was reeling. I had the impression that I’d made a terrible mistake. It should have been a relief, I supposed, that Joe wasn’t there to kill me. But the something very different he had in mind was not much better. I decided I needed to make my escape.

  As if he sensed my growing unease, Captain Joe eased over to his own seat, away from me. “Well, dig in, Kay,” he said. “You don’t get better hopper legs than at Tully’s.”

  “I think I should go,” I said.

  “Go?” He paused from chewing, a hopper leg hanging out of his mouth. “We haven’t even discussed passage.”

  “I…I think I made a mistake coming here.”

  He frowned. “Was it me?”

  I blinked at the question. Of course it was him. What else would it have been? But I said, “I’m just looking for a ride home, Captain Joe. Nothing else.”

  He stared at his plate of hoppers, then nodded. “Alright. Well, you can’t blame a man for trying. Let’s eat now, and talk after.” I hesitated. “Come on. You can’t expect me to eat all these hoppers by myself.”

  Good sense told me I should go. But the memory of six months of failed escape attempts, of six months of being turned away from every ship that touched down at Trel’s port, combined in my head with the thought of that missing paycheck, with visions of a Conglomerate assassin arriving on one of these ships. “Alright,” I said in a moment.

  “Good, good.” He passed me a plate. “Dig in.”

  Reluctantly, I did. I didn’t care for hopper legs. They had a chewy texture that rather turned my stomach, even when battered and fried like these ones. The fact that hoppers – fried, boiled, steamed, baked, grilled and even pureed – had composed the bulk of my diet since landing on Trel only solidified my stance. I detested the damned things.

  But if Captain Joe meant what he said, that the shenanigans were really over, I didn’t want to offend him. So I ate. I did not, however, drink when our Keldian sunrises arrived, despite his few hints on the point.

  He did, working his way through three of the mixed drinks and then a Coratian ale. Finally, his appetite sated, he sat back. “So, about passage…”

  I pushed my plate away, grateful to be able to call it quits. “What are your rates?” I asked. “I can give you twice standard.” I could, in truth, afford a lot more than that. Hell, I’d have cleaned out my bank account for safe passage out of here. But twice standard rates was a good starting point for negotiation.

  He nodded. “Twice standard. Hm.” He seemed to consider. “Alright.”

  My eyes widened in surprise. I hadn’t expected him to be that easy to convince. “Oh.”

  “Twice standard,” he repeated, “and tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  He grinned. “You know what I mean, Miss Kay.” He slipped a hand onto my thigh.

  I pulled it off, with some difficulty. “I thought you said no more of that?”

  “I never said that. I said we’d talk after dinner.” He was grinning ear to ear now. “And here we are, talking.”

  “Please,” I said, “I’m serious. I need passage out of here.”

  “And I need a good, long fuck,” he said.

  “That,” a third voice sounded, “is why God gave you two capable hands.”

  We both started, and I looked up to see a woman. She was tall and thin, and wearing a long coat that made her seem a little taller and thinner than she probably was.

  Captain Joe swore. “What in God’s name do you want, Landon? We’re conducting business here.”

  “Nah,” she said, plopping heavily onto a bench opposite us. “You’re done. The lady heard your terms, and, surprising no one, rejected them.” A cross between arrogance and self-satisfaction had settled on her features, but it did nothing to diminish her beauty. The twinkle in her green eyes, the flush to her cheeks and the confident smirk on her lips rather enhanced it. With her flame-red hair and trim figure, she was the kind of woman, I thought, who might have been a model or a senator’s wife, if she’d been interested.

  “This doesn’t concern you,” the freighter captain countered.

  “Go.” Her tone, now, was mirthless. “I’m not asking, Joe.”

  His eyes flashed and he offered a whole litany of swears. But he went.

  “Dammit,” I said after he’d gone. “What are you doing? He was my ride out of here.”

  She’d been sifting through what was left on my plate during Captain Joe’s farewell tirade, and now, pausing from chewing a hopper leg, she shook her head. “The kind of ride you’d have gotten from that old bastard isn’t the kind you’re interested in.”

  I could feel my face flush, as much from anger as embarrassment. “I would have paid.”

  She looked me up and down with a gaze so free that I felt myself color again. “Nah. He’d get better money, by weight, for felka berry. That is his preferred cargo, I understand.” Felka berry was grown on some of the desert planets, and when dried it was a powerful narcotic. Its use and transport were illegal throughout the Union, but that, of course, didn’t stop either.

  The newcomer was continuing, “Trust me, Katherine: men like Joe aren’t your ticket out of here.” She leaned back and cocked her head to the side. “Now, me on the other hand? Well, I may be just what you’re looking for.”

  I rather doubted it, and let an eyebrow creep up my forehead just far enough to convey my skepticism.

  She laughed. “The thing is Kate – you don’t mind if I call you Kate, do you? Anyway, the thing is-”

  She hadn’t slowed down long enough for me to say that I did mind, but now another thought crowded that one out. “Hold on. How do you know my name?”

  She grinned. “Oh, that’s easy. I came here to find you.”

  I felt my heart sink. This was it, then: the assassin I’d been expecting. The Conglomerate had finally decided I was no longer worth keeping around, and they’d sent this irreverent scrap of a woman to do me in. “For the Conglomerate?”

  She smirked. “You can’t be naive enough, Kate, to think that they’re really sending someone to rescue you from the exile they’ve imposed? They want you here, where you’re safely out of the way – where they can reach you if they need and dispose of you when they decide they’re done.”

  I could feel my hands trembling. I tried to force a steadiness to my tone. If I was going to die, I was going to do it with my boots on. “So you’re here to kill me?”
/>
  She laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t join you for dinner if I was here to kill you.” She shrugged. “Anyway, assassination isn’t my style.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “The same thing they’re trying to keep safe.” She leaned across the table and tapped a forefinger against the side of my head. “The secrets buried inside that brain of yours, Katherine Ellis.”

  Chapter Two

  “Wait,” I said, “you want me to cross the Conglomerate? Are you nuts?”

  “Yes, and…” She shrugged. “Most days, also yes.”

  I frowned. Her levity was almost as disturbing as the proposition. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m completely serious. You give me what I want, I give you what you want. Everyone wins. Except the Conglomerate.” She grinned. “But they’re overdue for a few losses, I think. Don’t you?”

  “You’re insane.”

  “We’ve already established that,” she said airily. She was, I thought, positively enjoying herself. “But it’s not relevant.” She poked through my plate, pulling out a fat, meaty leg. “I’m on the clock, Kate. I need your answer.”

  “My name’s not Kate,” I snapped. “And it’s a no. Of course it’s a no. I’m not suicidal.”

  She chewed the fried hopper thoughtfully, then shrugged. “Your neck, I guess. If you want to sit around waiting for a Conglomerate bullet, that’s your call.”

  I scowled at her. “I’ll find another way.”

  She laughed. “Maybe you could try Joe again, see if his offer still stands.” She scrunched up her nose. “I’d make it a delivery first, payment later deal, though. Can’t say I trust old Joe.”

  “Go to hell.” My cheeks were flaming.

  “Come on, Kate,” she said. “You and I both know there’s no way off this rock for you unless it’s in a body bag – or my ship.”

  “Who the hell are you, anyway?” I demanded. “A Landon-something?”

  “Ah. Where are my manners. I forgot, we hadn’t been introduced. Magdalene Landon, captain of the Black Flag, at your service.”