Dark Angels Rising Read online

  “And when the battle itself actually kicks off, one half of our ‘allies’ would open fire on the other half, and the few that choose not to take part in all of that squabbling would stay close behind us until the battle is won, at which point they’d merrily stab us in the back and claim all the Elder tech for themselves.”

  “And that,” Cornische summarised, “is why we chose to be somewhat economical with the truth.”

  “Dear gods,” Nate said. “And you’ve come to this place by choice?”

  “Oh, it’s not so bad,” Leesa assured him. “You just have to bear in mind where you are and keep your wits about you.”

  “Saavi,” Cornische said, “any progress on narrowing down why we need to be here?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.” He didn’t say ‘keep working on it’, he didn’t need to. “Okay, we’ve got three days. I think we can assume the Barbary authorities are going to keep tabs on our comings and goings, which might make it tricky for anyone concerned about maintaining their anonymity once this is over. Either we’ll have to leave the ship as Dark Angels, and advertise our presence here, or we go into town in civvies knowing that Barbary will record and identify our faces as we disembark.

  “We can do something about this but not necessarily enough. Their most likely methods of watching us,” and he counted them off on his fingers. “Fixed cameras, spyflies, satellite observation – let’s not forget how big they are on satellites around here – human agents, and tracking spores.

  “Lees, Raider, can you identify any fixed cameras set to watch us and deal with those?”

  “I can locate any that are within a given parameter,” Raider confirmed.

  “And we should be able to hack them to set up a looped image showing a view of the empty field if and when needed,” Leesa added.

  “I can clear the immediate area of any spyflies seconds before anyone leaves the ship, utilising focussed EMP bursts,” Raider added. “And will disrupt any satellite observation by releasing a swarm of mirror flies at the same time. They’ll be virtually invisible from the ground but will reflect the sky back to any aerial observer at whatever altitude.”

  “I’ll rig a warning device to identify the presence of tracking spores should any of us walk through a cloud and collect them,” Leesa said.

  “And I can do a quick sweep in shadow form to spot any human observers,” Jen added.

  “Is everyone happy with that?” Cornische asked. “I don’t pretend it’ll safeguard against everything, and if Barbary decide we’re worth more sophisticated methods there’s little we can do, but it should take care of most approaches.

  Nobody voiced any objections.

  “Right then, let’s get to work.”

  Thirteen

  “Are you coming out for a drink?” Leesa asked.

  They’d spent the afternoon in research, getting up to speed with what had changed on Barbary in the past ten years, or rather, what hadn’t; tracing old contacts, people they could approach without fear of their presence being broadcast, and looking for anything that might hint of a former colleague having settled in the vicinity. It was laborious and time consuming work, even with Raider’s help, and unsurprisingly many of the people they’d known had moved on, retired, or were dead. The opportunity to relax a little and get off the ship to visit a local bar was welcomed by just about everyone.

  “We’re heading over to the Wayward Star,” Leesa continued, “Carlton’s old place – it’s still there, can you believe that?”

  “Good to know some things never change,” Cornische said, remembering the bar fondly. “Thanks for the invitation, but I think I’ll give it a miss.”

  “Are you sure? Raider’s already preparing loops to feed the council’s cameras and Shadow’s doing a quick recce to make sure there are no human observers. This might be the last chance we get to kick back and let off some steam for a while.”

  “Tempting, but I’d like to keep an eye on things here.”

  “Oh? Something I should worry about?”

  “No, just me being overly cautious. Saavi’s insistence that there could be a downside to our visit here is niggling at me, and I can’t shake the concern that if we think Barbary is a good place to look for former Angels…”

  “…Saflik may have reached the same conclusion,” Leesa finished for him. “I’ll stay on board with you.”

  “No, as you say, chances to relax are going to be few and far between, so make the most of this one. Raider will call you back if anything happens, and odds are that nothing will.”

  She delayed a moment longer, clearly undecided.

  “Go!” He shooed her away.

  “Okay, I’m gone, but the Wayward Star isn’t far away if you need us.”

  Nate found himself intrigued by Jen, much to his own surprise. The impression he’d gained of her from the holodrama and various accounts of the Dark Angels’ exploits didn’t do her justice. But then he supposed they’d been concerned purely with Shadow – the cold efficient warrior, capable of being brutal: the killer from the dark. They’d made no attempt to portray the woman behind that persona, presumably because they could discover little or nothing about her. The person he was slowly getting to know could not have been more different from the general perception. She was intelligent, compassionate, amusing, and when you added in her physical attributes – Jen was lithe, and moved with an elegance that saw every movement flowing into the next in a manner he’d never encountered before, like a dancer but not in a considered or deliberate way; it was all natural unstudied grace – the combination proved fascinating.

  Saavi chose to stay in the cloud chamber, complaining that the potentials were especially obscure at the moment – as far as Nate could tell, that had been the constant state of things ever since he came aboard – while Drake had declined the invitation to join them. Not that Nate could pretend to be sorry about the latter. He and the captain had reached a sort of unspoken mutual acceptance, but he doubted they would ever be friends. That left Jen, Mosi, and Leesa to accompany him on the short walk to the Wayward Star, a bar which the others were familiar with from previous visits.

  “So you’ve been to Barbary before?” he asked once they’d claimed a table and organised the first round of drinks.

  “A few times, yes,” Jen confirmed. “It was a semi-regular port of call back in the Dark Angels’ heyday.”

  “A useful place to hang out when things got too intense,” Leesa added. “Somewhere to lie low while we waited for things to cool down a bit and public attention to shift elsewhere.”

  “You’ll have been to safer ports,” Mosi added. “This isn’t somewhere we stayed around for any longer than we needed to.”

  “Yeah, well, it you will open your doors to the sort of folk other ports don’t invite in…” Leesa said. “Not everyone you’ll meet here is an arsehole, but it’s safer to assume they are until proven otherwise.”

  Nate glanced around at the bar’s other clientele; spacers for the most part, hard-bitten men and women, no doubt, but they seemed no more menacing than those he’d encountered on a hundred other worlds.

  A second round of drinks followed the first, and then a third. Mosi was describing to Leesa the mechanisms of a Falcon racer, which gave Nate the opportunity to lean in closer to Jen and ask, “Have you ever eaten at a place called the Blue Buccaneer?”

  She regarded him warily, “No, can’t say that I have. Why do you ask?”

  Leesa evidently overheard the exchange – either she had the hearing of Manqulin desert bat, or Mosi’s explanation must have been less absorbing than Nate had hoped. “This isn’t one of your infamous gastronomic ‘finds’ is it, Nate?” she said.

  Jen looked back and forth between the two.

  “Nate was renowned for this sort of thing back when we were on Pelquin’s Comet,” Leesa explained. “He’d find a restaurant off the beaten track and drag his friend Pelquin there to s
ample the local cuisine. I gather they had a few… interesting experiences.”

  “Most of the time we shared fabulous experiences,” Nate said. “We discovered some really wonderful food that we’d never have eaten otherwise, but I’ll admit that along the way there were… one or two that weren’t to our taste; disappointments, even. That’s to be expected, though, when you boldly go into the unknown.”

  “You were discovering restaurants,” Leesa pointed out, “not blazing a trail to new star systems.”

  “The point is, I’ve been recommended the Blue Buccaneer,” Nate continued, determined to plough on despite Leesa’s scepticism. “And since Pel isn’t around, I wondered if you lot would care to try the place out with me.” He couldn’t see any way to not include Leesa and Mosi at this stage. “It should be fun.”

  “If you can call food poisoning ‘fun’,” said Leesa.

  “None of them were ever that bad,” Nate insisted. His reputation deserved some defence. “And the number of really good meals Pel and I enjoyed more than compensated for the occasional let down. So what do you say?”

  Leesa shook her head. “Count me out.”

  Mosi had yet to comment, and Jen hesitated, clearly undecided.

  “It’s in walking distance,” Nate said quickly, “and if we don’t like the look of it we can simply turn around and head back to the ship.”

  “Okay,” Jen said. “Why not?”

  “Your funeral,” Leesa said, pushing her chair back and getting to her feet.

  Mosi followed suit. “I’ll come back with you, Lees. Not sure I fancy adventures in gastronomy right now.”

  “We really can’t tempt you?” Nate said.

  “Not a chance. I need to have a word with the captain in any case,” Leesa said. “We’ll see you two back at the ship.”

  Nate worked hard at not smiling as they left.

  The cool evening air held the promise of more rain, and the puddles that had gathered at the edges of the road were testament to some heavy downpours while they were in the bar, but no new ones assailed them as they made their way on foot to the restaurant.

  “Normally I try out places like this first before taking anyone there,” Nate said, “but I haven’t had the chance to do so with this one, so I can’t guarantee a thing.”

  “Well, we’ll soon find out,” Jen said. “You like your food, I take it.”

  “What gave it away? It just seems to me a shame that we visit a new world, a new culture, without trying the cuisine. I mean everywhere has something different to offer – new spices, new techniques, a revolutionary form of marinade, a unique species of fowl or fish, a breed of animal found nowhere else or legumes that aren’t grown on any other world… Can you imagine being within a few metres of something truly spectacular and missing out on it completely, blithely walking away without ever knowing it was there?”

  She laughed. “You really do like your food!”

  “Sorry,” he said, worried that he was coming across as obsessed.

  “No, you’ve no need to apologise. It’s refreshing to see a man so passionate about something.”

  His perminal was next to useless here, as he’d failed to synch it with the local web, but he had been given directions to the restaurant and so knew where to look, which was just as well. All that identified the Blue Buccaneer was a simple engraved sign – no gimmicks, no wooden schooner in 3D projection leaping out of the frontage to ensure you couldn’t stroll past unheeding, just a brushed metal plaque affixed to the wall bearing the restaurant’s name and a stylised fish of some sort beneath it. A small strip light protruded to shine on the sign from above, but that was all the flamboyance they allowed themselves. Nate had a good feeling about the place from the moment it first came into view. He would have been hard pressed to explain why – certainly it bucked the convention of eateries that were pristine and modern, with bright fascia and consciously sophisticated appeal. Instead, it looked lived in and warm, with timber-framed windows and tendrils of ivy – or a local equivalent – climbing the walls; an establishment assured in what it served and comfortable with its lot. Here was a place with no pretentions, no striving to be anything other than what it was.

  “Looks… inviting,” Jen said.

  And that summed up his own response in a nutshell.

  “Oh!” Jen said, staring at the name plaque.

  “What?”

  She pointed to the symbol beneath the lettering. “A fish with a unicorn’s horn – Saavi asked us to keep an eye open for a sign like that. She called it a gnawed whale, I think, or something of the sort. Must remember to tell her about it when we get back to the ship.”

  The solid wooden door swung open at the lightest of touches to usher them inside. Beyond it, the comfortable vibe continued; the décor was simple and unpretentious, the service – human waiting staff rather than automated or virtual – charming and efficient. They were given a table by the window, through a dining room that was busy without being packed.

  The only slight disappointment proved to be the food; not that there was anything wrong with it as such, consisting as it did of simple honest fare, well prepared and enjoyable to eat – Jen opted for a steak, medium rare, topped with a pat of herb butter, while he went with fish: a local variety of ray served in a citrus sauce with frond-like herbs and what appeared to be tiny pickled flower buds. The white flesh pulled away in curved strips that put him in mind of bleached ribs, but they were soft and succulent to eat and full of flavour.

  In many ways, the food was fully in keeping with the surroundings. It was just that it lacked surprise; there was nothing here to make the experience stand out, no tang of spice he’d never encountered before, no sharp twist on the familiar. Nate felt he could have eaten a similar meal in any one of a hundred restaurants on a hundred different worlds, and suspected that in a year’s time he wouldn’t recall anything that he’d consumed.

  The evening’s two highlights were provided by the wine – a locally produced red made from a grape he’d never heard of: full bodied, a little dry but fruity, putting him in mind of a decent Merlot but more fragrant – and the company.

  Jen proved a charming and interesting dining companion. She told him of life as a farmer, showing him calloused fingers to prove it hadn’t all involved automated systems and there was still plenty of manual labour to be done. She shared with him her first disastrous attempt to bake her own bread and had him laughing appreciatively at an anecdote involving the escape of prize-winning livestock and the extraordinary lengths they resorted to in order to capture the final stubborn escapee without injuring it.

  For his part, he regaled her with stories of life aboard Pelquin’s Comet, of his friendship with Pel and some of the scrapes they’d found themselves in. Eking out a living on a trading ship, particularly one that employed a flexible approach to legal niceties, had resulted in a number of incidents that were a lot more amusing in hindsight than they had been to live through.

  “What about Cornische,” she wanted to know. “What was he like?”

  “Honestly? He was a pain. The unwanted cousin you drag along to a party because your parents say you have to.” Nate drew a deep breath. “In fairness, he was in an uncomfortable position from the off. We were a tight-knit crew who had worked together for years.” He saw no reason to mention the period he’d spent estranged from Pel and the others following the argument over Julia. “Drake was forced upon us by the bank, whose backing we needed to finance the trip, but no one wanted him there. He must have been used to that, though – to being the outsider, I mean. It was his job, after all… And I have to admit he did have his uses.” Nate recalled the incident on Brannan’s World, the stand-off with port authorities when it looked certain the Comet was about to be impounded. Somehow, Drake had persuaded them to let the ship leave.

  “But there was always something about him that got right up my nose,” he continued. “Drake had this superior attitude that just made
me want to punch him in the face, as if he knew things that the rest of us didn’t. Of course, I had no idea then quite how true that was.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, realising that he’d been letting his mouth run away with him while talking about someone she knew well. “But you did ask.”

  She laughed. “No need to apologise. I can picture how irritating that whole situation must have been. The only thing I struggle with is the thought of the captain doing something like that… and for ten years.”

  “He was good at it as well, by all accounts,” Nate felt obliged to concede.

  In fairness, Drake seemed different now – less stiff and formal than Nate remembered. Had he been like this back on the Comet, maybe they would have got along a bit better. Then again, maybe not.

  The meal ended soon afterwards, with Nate confident he would remember the conversation a lot longer than the food.

  “Where did you hear about this place again?” Jen asked as they took their leave.

  “From the barman at the Wayward Star,” he admitted. “I’ll know better next time.”

  “No, it was lovely,” she insisted. “I can’t remember the last time I had the chance to sit down and relax over good food in good company at a proper restaurant. Thank you.”

  She reached up, on tip toes, to kiss his cheek. He turned his head and their lips met. Suddenly, they were kissing in earnest, his arms closing around her, feeling the supple strength of her body.

  After a few breathless seconds she pulled away, from both the kiss and his embrace.

  “I… I can’t do this. Sorry. I’m married, and I love my husband.”

  Married? Who gets married in this day and age? “Yeah, but we could all be dead tomorrow,” was all he said. It sounded lame, even to his own ears.