So Warden had figured out that I was planning to cross the Black. Her having my gun was going to make it difficult to maintain control of the ship if I started flying it to suspicious places, but she obviously didn’t know me well enough yet if she thought that would make me give in. She herself had made it impossible for me to return to Ritsuko City. I’d just have to take a more delicate approach, or, failing that, threaten to beat her to death with my own severed leg.
I tried the opening and closing mechanism a few times. It worked relatively smoothly. It wasn’t going to be completely airtight, but we still had the internal door, and I probably wouldn’t need to do any EVA work. Even if I did, the gap wasn’t enormous; it wouldn’t suck all the air out of the internal atmosphere if I worked fast.
I tested the opening mechanism one more time and saw Daniel at the entrance to the docking bay, accompanied by (presumably) Jemima. Who, to my relief, was not the ironically named ex-wrestler bodyguard my imagination had been furnishing, but a girl his age, with bright pink hair and a baggy hoodie matched paradoxically with tight black leggings.
“I thought you were coming back in the Quantunnel,” I said.
Daniel’s face was very red, and sweat glistened on his brow. He started a little at my question, having been gazing fixedly at the girl. “What? Oh, I wanted to show it to her from outside first. It’s cool, isn’t it, Jemima?”
She was looking over the ship’s ample curves. “So this is yours?” she asked. Then she glanced nervously over her shoulder at the docking bay entrance.
He took a step closer and pretended to appraise the ship, arms folded. “Yeah, that’s my ship,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant but emphasizing the my weirdly. “I just got my own ship now, no big deal.”
I leaned on the door frame and stared at them. His eyes kept flicking over to her, studying her reaction, but her own gaze was reserved only for switching between the ship and the door by which she’d entered. “Wouldn’t it be, like, really obvious to pirates?”
“That’s what I said,” I interjected, unable to help myself.
“Is that what happened to the door?” she asked, nodding shallowly toward the dents.
“Oh my god,” said Daniel, dropping the aloof act. “Did we miss it? Did pirates try to board while we were gone?”
I gave that question the awkward silence it deserved. “Not while parked in a docking bay, no.”
He laughed a little bit too much. “Oh yeah, of course. Not while parked.” He coughed, reassembled the aloof look, and pretended to have noticed me for the first time. “Oh, hey, Jacques. This is Jemima. Jemima, this is my pilot, Jacques McKeown. He’s just a friend of mine, y’know. Maybe you’ve heard of him; he’s written some books?”
Jemima had been watching behind her during most of the introduction but now gave me her full attention, quickly looking me up and down. “You’re not Jacques McKeown.”
She didn’t say it with the tone of one triumphantly revealing subterfuge. It was a matter-of-fact statement, mixed with the slight bafflement of one wondering why no one else has seen what seemed obvious to them. Even so, I jumped and almost lost my balance. “What?”
Jemima shrugged. “Well, y’know, the real Jacques McKeown wouldn’t come out and fly other people’s ships, because he, like, writes books full time.”
Daniel laughed a bit too much again. “No, really, it’s actually the real, actual Jacques McKeown. My dad got hold of him for me.”
“Well, your dad was probably, you know, lying to you. Like he did when he said he didn’t break Mr. Peterson’s legs for giving you a failing grade.”
Daniel seemed about to say something, but then fell silent as a thoughtful look crossed his face. Apparently this extremely compelling point had not occurred to him.
It was time to flick the switch in my head. I laughed good-naturedly, making a pretty convincing job of it, if I do say so myself. “I know how it looks,” I said, smiling in a crinkly eyed favorite-uncle kind of way. “But you’d be surprised how little money novels make these days. And a writer’s life is never going to be enough for someone who’s used to space adventuring, is it?”
She touched her chin, looking at me with reassuring uncertainty. “But . . .”
The entrance to the docking bay opened noisily, and Jemima almost jumped out of her skin. She let out a sigh of relief when she saw that it was only one of the soldiers, smartly relieving a single member of the armed group that had been watching us vigilantly for the entire hour.
“Hey, can we go inside now?” she said, with one last look behind her.
Daniel beamed at the suggestion. I moved out of the doorway to let them in, keeping an eye on Jemima. I offered a cheery wave to the armed guards, then “closed” the exterior door.
All throughout and following takeoff, Jemima stood over me to watch the scenery from the best spot. But once we were out of Cloud Castle’s designated clearing and back in the real clouds, the scenery was swiftly reduced to flat, unbroken yellow like we were flying through custard.
“So, is it, like, a Santa Claus thing?” she asked. Most of her jitteriness seemed to have mysteriously evaporated since our departure.
“What?” I said.
“You know, like, you’re not Jacques McKeown but you’re one of Jacques McKeown’s helpers?” She gave a little twitch at the corner of her mouth, the sort of thing nervous people do that will only turn into a full smile if someone else smiles first.
Daniel obligingly burst into another of his desperate, overlong laughs. Of course he was hovering around, too. He had to maintain a constant orbit of about three feet from Jemima. A little Goldilocks band of his very own, not far enough to separate from her but not close enough that she might pick up on his incredibly obvious crush.
“I am Jacques McKeown,” I said, flatly. I’d been trying to get into the mindset of the real Jacques McKeown, and after a couple of dry heaves, I had concluded that he would be pretty testy by this point. Luckily, that would require very little acting.
“No, seriously, he is. Dad checked him out on the ID network and that was his name,” said Daniel, confirming Ms. Warden’s story.
“Well, that doesn’t actually prove it,” said Jemima. “Jacques McKeown probably doesn’t write books under his real name, ’cos all the other pilots want to kill him and stuff. I heard about that on the fan site. It kind of sounds like a name someone made up because it sounds like a piloty kind of name.”
“Which could easily be the case, if the owner of the name’s father was a pilot and wanted their son to also be a pilot,” I pointed out. This was true of my own dad. He’d been a full-time courier for Speedstar Transport before star piloting officially became a thing, and it’s always easier to con people with the truth.
“I guess,” said Jemima. Then, “Oh wow.” Her eyes flew to the view outside.
The pollution clouds parted like hideous yellow curtains over a nighttime window and the Platinum God of Whale Sharks burst back out into the blackness of space, nimbly slipping through the same gap in the surveillance net as before. The infinite spangled emptiness had never looked friendlier. For one thing, it gave me something to distract the passengers with.
“I’ve never seen stars like that before,” breathed Jemima, rapt.
“So what do you think of my ship?” asked Daniel, brushing some imaginary dust off a section of ornamental railing. “You think it’s so lame, right? My dad picked it out. I told him to get the red one but he can be so stupid . . .”
“It’s really cool,” said Jemima, deforming her face against the curved plexiglass above and to the right of me.
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it?” said Daniel, changing his tune with the ease and smoothness of a freight train trying to switch tracks while halfway past the junction. “It cost, like, half a million or something.”
Jemima finally peeled her cheek off the window, leaving a patch of pubescent grease and hair dye. “What? Oh . . . yeah, the ship. It’s really . . . nice. What a
re you going to, you know, call it?”
“Call it? Oh. Uh. What would you think if I called it the Jemima?” I felt a surge of regret for having given Warden my blaster, because I had a sudden longing to put the end in my mouth.
“Oh,” said Jemima awkwardly. “That’s . . . cool . . .”
“Hey,” I said brightly, leaping to the rescue as star pilots tend to do. “Where do you crazy kids want to go, anyway?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Jemima, relievedly looking away from Daniel’s eager face. “I was going to say, I can’t stay out too long. I didn’t actually tell my mum that I was going out.”
“It’s cool. I probably wasn’t going to stay out very long either,” said Daniel hastily. “Where do you want to go?”
Jemima glanced back at space through the plexiglass, like a diner trying to pick from a menu. “I’m fine with wherever you want to go.”
“I’m literally fine with wherever—”
“Erm, excuse me,” I interjected, before the discussion continued its round trip to nowhere fast. “Did I hear you say you only need me for a few hours?”
“Oh, well, if you want to hang out for longer . . .” said Daniel.
“No no no,” I interrupted, nipping that one in the bud immediately. “It’s fine. I was just under the impression that I was being contracted for a few days here.”
“Not all in one go,” he said, nonplused. “It’s a school night. I was just going to take a, you know, test-drivey thing and then you can drop us off and Dad can call you in at the weekend some time.”
“Yeah, that should work out. My mum’s usually away at weekends,” said Jemima quietly.
A little shoot of hope sprouted forth from the black bean of my internal mood. Drop them off? As in, they’re not even going to supervise me taking the ship back to the Ubatsu building? I could have crossed the Black and been safely surrounded by fellow pirates before the night was over. And bringing them the Platinum God of Whale Sharks might even buy me a spot in a top bunk right off the bat.
There was still the matter of Warden, but maybe she’d want to be dropped off somewhere, too. If she didn’t, I could always “drop her off” in one way or another. Trac, I thought. That was a dark thought out of nowhere.
“Well, how about just a tour of the Solar System, then?” I said aloud, lent energy. “A flyover of Saturn’s rings is something you have to do once in your life. Hell, you’re still young. Let’s do it twice for kicks.”
“That sounds awesome,” said Jemima, not looking away from the view.
“Awesome, yeah,” parroted Daniel. Then he felt confident enough to move an inch closer and initiate a bout of hover handing.
I set a course for Saturn, gunned what passed for the main thruster, and gripped the joysticks with a silent sigh of relief. There was something very pleasing about not having to kidnap the two children. Even disregarding the complications it would have created, I’d be plied if I wasn’t starting to like the little brackets.
Daniel was still a little doint, obviously, but the knowledge that he had partially been doing all of this to impress a girl sort of recontextualized him a bit. There was a certain pathetic lovability about it, like a dog holding its bowl in its mouth.
And Jemima’s reaction to seeing space had made me feel a little warm inside. My first gaze into the abyss had been similar, and it was something I saw so rarely these days, now that people thought they could get the experience just as well from immersion simulators. Or by going out onto their roof garden in the middle of a quiet night and looking up.
We flew past Luna, glancing briefly at the lights of Ritsuko City, under the colossal plexiglass shell that the moon wore like a sparkling monocle. Jemima remained by my side, hypnotized by the stars. So of course Daniel stuck around, fidgeting with his fingers. In contrast, I don’t think he’d looked out of the window at all since Jemima had come aboard. His attention alternated between being focused entirely on her and combing his fingers through his highlighted forelock.
Experience transporting tourists had taught me that the scenery tends to get samey very fast, and right on cue, Jemima resumed the discussion, after Luna was behind us and the view was awash with blackness again. “So are you really, truly Jacques McKeown?” she asked, turning and half perching on my console.
“He totally is,” answered Daniel on my behalf.
“I bet he can’t prove it,” she said. She seemed more excited, bobbing on her heels and clasping her hands. “Ask him something about the books. Something, you know, only Jacques McKeown would know.”
“I will! Okay. Um. In what book . . .”
An alarm sounded. My touchscreen started flashing red, and the console in front of the captain’s chair gibbered urgently. A few crucial seconds were lost as I navigated the swipe menus looking for the damage report, then I clicked my tongue. “One of the rods in the engine compartment isn’t cooling.”
“Is it supposed to?” asked Jemima, eyes wide.
I stood up. “Well, considering that they’re cooling rods, yes. Don’t worry, this is pretty common. Nine times out of ten, it’s just misaligned. I’ll be gone about half an hour to fix it. Daniel. Jemima.” I put a hand on one shoulder for each of them. “I need you to step up for me. I won’t be long, but if any more red lights come on, I need you to stay calm, be strong, and let me know as soon as possible. Can you do that?”
Daniel’s chest swelled. “Yes, sir!” Jemima nodded.
“Good. Stay here.”
I jogged out of the bridge, then slowed immediately to a walk when I was confident that I was out of sight. There was no reason to start worrying until at least five of the cooling rods were down. On top of that, I knew perfectly well why the rod had deactivated: because I had told it to.
Every time I started work with a new ship, I made a point of learning the quickest way to make an alarm go off that doesn’t actually damage the ship. It was always handy to be able to manufacture myself a coffee break on short notice. And on this occasion I had to swiftly reacquaint myself with Jacques McKeown trivia before the grilling continued.
I headed for the reading room. I wouldn’t be able to read all of the plying things, but I had a familiarity with the events in the books, mainly because most of the bitter conversations I’d had in the Brandied Bracket drifted to the topic of which McKeown books ripped off whose stories. I’d just have to hope that giving the titles and the blurbs a quick once-over would give me enough to bulltrac with.
I met Warden in the corridor outside the reading room, and she followed me in like a cat hanging around expecting to be fed. “What was that alert sound?” she demanded.
I made a beeline for the bookshelf. “Minor engine fault,” I said casually, not looking back at her. “Two-second fix. Don’t worry about it.”
“So nothing’s going wrong?”
I ran my finger along the garish spines. There were only about thirty books in McKeown’s entire canon, but the shelves had been supplied with every book in every edition, format, box set, and special-edition re-release, with the searing attention to detail of a true psychotic fan. “Nah,” I said.
There was a surge of energy, and I felt a stifling heat on one side of my body, as if someone had opened the door of a preheated oven. Instinctively I dived away from it, landing on my back in time to see a sphere of amplified blaster energy splatter across the Quantunnel booth in the corner.
The last few tendrils of orange-white energy slithered inside the booth’s control panel. It gave a little electronic belch, and then hot slag began to drool from around the screws and the gaps between keys.
I looked at Warden. She was holding my blaster outstretched, her mouth tight and determined. I could see that the gun was on the now potentially ironically named Solve All Immediate Problems setting. Both she and I flinched as she fired again, the shot melting one of the upper corners of the Quantunnel booth’s shuttered doorway and ensuring its permanent uselessness.
“How about now?” she asked
coolly.
Chapter 13
I was still lying on my back by the bookshelf, propped up on my elbows. On instinct I made an attempt to quickly move into a standing position, which was immediately aborted when I found myself staring down the barrel of my own gun. Not for the first time, but on this occasion, someone else was holding it.
“What are you doing?” I asked, displaying my palms and trying not to sound too interrogative.
“I’m making a career change,” she said. “I’m going to kidnap Daniel and Jemima, and you are going to help me.”
Her voice was the same as always, condescending and professional, but the end of the gun was shaking, and I could see lines of sweat escaping from her hairline. I hoped she hadn’t gone insane. I could always handle sane people. Sane people are predictable. It’s practically the definition of the word.
I was about to ask why she was doing this, but that seemed like a fatuous question. “Is this about being made a divisional head?”
“I am not going to end up like Brian Pritchard. I will not allow myself to be filed away until Henderson needs another scapegoat. Stand up.”
I did so, keeping my hands where she could see them. She was smart enough to stay a good two arm lengths away, keeping the gun trained on me. “Okay, so what exactly is your plan, from this point?” I asked.
She moved to the door and gestured with the gun, instructing me to head through it. “You will fly this ship to an area outside planetary surveillance and make contact with a pirate organization cognizant enough to deal with that can be trusted to take us in and shelter us from the authorities and from Henderson.”
I walked the hallways as slowly as I felt I could get away with, but she didn’t take the bait. She didn’t try to hasten me by jabbing me with the barrel. She kept the gun out of my grabbing range and matched my speed. Together we shuffled along the expensive carpet like a pair of slugs negotiating the floor of a salt factory.