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  The crew devolved into shouts and cheers as the two pummeled each other, rolling about on the deck, then lurching to their feet and trading blows. Behind the first few rows of watchers, the crowd shifted and jostled to keep Bridgeford and his mates away as long as possible.

  At first, Grubbs and Detheridge swung heavily at each other, but soon slowed as they tired.

  The quartermaster’s shouts grew louder as he and his mates forced their way through the crowd.

  “Belay that, damn your eyes!” Bridgeford yelled as he shoved aside the last few watchers between him and the brawlers.

  By this time, Grubbs and Detheridge were no longer so much fighting as aggressively hugging, neither one able to summon the energy to swing a solid blow and each using the other as means to stay on their feet. They clutched at each other and swayed a bit, as Bridgeford and Hobler sought to separate them.

  “What’s this? What’s this about, then?” Bridgeford yelled.

  Both of the fighters swayed on their feet, then, as one, hawked up blood and spat. It was possibly coincidence that each managed to do so close enough to spatter on Hobler’s and Bridgeford’s boots.

  “Damn — off with you!” Bridgeford yelled, jerking Detheridge along with him. Hobler followed with Grubbs.

  MINORCA LEFT the winds around Kuriyya and sailed on. Their destination wasn’t announced and Avrel couldn’t guess at it. He might have, if he’d had any duties on the quarterdeck and could track their position at all with a glance at the navigation plot. Still, he made a note of each sail change, the direction of the winds, the position of the ship’s keel, planes, and rudder. It might be possible, given enough information, for Eades to narrow their destination.

  When they finally did arrive, Avrel found his efforts were for naught, as they did not arrive at any system. Instead Minorca hove-to in the depths of the Dark.

  There were two other ships, one a merchantman not too different than Minorca and the other a smaller, though better armed, sloop.

  Avrel eyed the other ships as he tied off the last gasket holding Minorca’s uncharged sails in place — he and Sween were the last ones done, as they had this side of the sail to themselves with Grubbs and Detheridge locked in the hold for fighting. Still, it gave Avrel more time to study the other ships.

  Captain Morell had worked in close to the other merchantman, close enough for a boarding tube to be rigged between the two ships, and Avrel could make out every detail. He committed those details to memory, hoping it would allow Eades to track the other ship down, since they’d be unable to name the place of the meeting.

  The sloop hung off in the distance, some thirty degrees above the two merchantmen and angled so that her guns bore on both ships. She was pierced for eighteen guns, Avrel noted. More than Minorca, though only half the size. She was clearly built for battle, not trade, and likely carried heavier guns than Minorca as well.

  Neither ship had any identifying colors flashing from their mast or hull, and neither did Minorca.

  A hand on his vacsuited shoulder drew Avrel’s attention to Sween, who pointed down to the ship’s hull.

  Hobler was waving, the sign for them to make the last lines fast and return to the sail locker.

  THE SCENE at the boarding tube was somber.

  The last of the clasps were made fast by those still outside the hull and the tube aired. Minorca’s crew gathered around the hatch. They had their instructions, but most were unhappy about the prospect now that it was here. It was one thing to ponder a thing in the abstract, while the figures of each man’s share of a successful trading run were foremost — it was quite another to see the thing carried out.

  “Not our place to judge what the Barbary’s do to each other,” Detheridge muttered. “This raiding back and forth, it’s part of their culture, like, right?”

  Grubbs nodded.

  They’d been released from confinement and brought out to assist in transferring the cargo, as everyone aboard referred to what was about to be in Minorca’s hold.

  “Brought their ways with ‘em, even from Earth, I think,” Sween added.

  The others, including those others of the crew close enough to hear, nodded agreement.

  Avrel, who remembered his lessons from Lesser Sibward, knew better, but kept quiet. The others were trying to settle themselves to the task and wouldn’t brook disagreement. While he knew that the Barbary might have been originally settled by those who could trace their Earth-ancestry back to that region on the planet — though they might never have actually lived there — the makeup had changed dramatically over the centuries. This region of space had become a catch-all for spacers and colonists not wanted elsewhere. The worst of the Core might make their way to the Fringe, but the worst of the Fringe made their way to the Barbary.

  The hatch opened and two vacsuited figures entered. They scanned the assembled crew, then nodded to Captain Morell, who nodded back. Without a word being spoken, they made way at the hatch and other figures entered Minorca.

  Unsuited, heads down, they shuffled forward, bound at wrists and ankles with thin cord, then bound together so that each one’s hands were nearly touching the waist of the one in front.

  Hobler counted them off as they entered, then cut the line attaching a group as he reached ten, the number to be placed in each of the hold’s compartments.

  “Harre,” he said, “you and your mates take these.”

  The mess singled out kept their own eyes downcast, but Harre took the line and his mates surrounded the group to take them below.

  So it went, each group of ten in the “cargo” being led below by one of Minorca’s messes to be placed in a compartment.

  The work went on in silence, save for Hobler calling out the mess which was to take the next group below, until one man in the shuffling line looked up at Hobler’s voice.

  “Oy! New Londoners? I’m Barden Dary off Christina’s Rose! Bound home from Hso-hsi and taken off —”

  One of the vacsuited figures from the other ship leapt forward and struck the man with a stunstick, knocking him to the deck unconscious.

  “No talk!” the suit’s external speakers sounded, and the figure waved his stunstick at the others.

  Kaycie whispered something to Morell, who listened for a moment, then shook his head sharply. She stepped back from him, jaw clenched.

  “Detail a mess to carry that man,” Morell said, his own jaw tight. “And any man who speaks to the cargo will be put in-atmosphere at the next system, with no shares — is that understood?”

  When only silence greeted him, Morell repeated. “Is that understood?”

  The chorus of, “Aye, sir,” was muted, but appeared to satisfy him.

  “THIS AIN’T RIGHT,” Grubbs muttered into his mug.

  They were at their mess table, the berthing deck quieter than Avrel had ever heard one. Captain Morell had ordered an extra issue of spirits, and so their mugs were full to brimming. Avrel sipped at his, wanting a clear head, while the others gulped, clearly trying to dull their wits after taking the cargo below — and the revelation that Minorca was not hauling only those taken in raids amongst the Barbary worlds, but spacers from New London and, he suspected, other nations as well.

  Detheridge’s face was the darkest, for at the end of the seeming never-ending chain of “cargo” had come two full compartments of women.

  “Those girls were off Vólkerhausen,” she said, never taking her eyes from her mug. “I’ll swear to it. They don’t do that hair-beading nowhere else.”

  “Not no Barbary world, that,” Grubbs muttered.

  “It would be all right if they were?” Detheridge raised her eyes to glare at Grubbs. “Knowing what they’re bound for?”

  Grubbs looked up and the two locked eyes for a moment. They half rose, as though to launch themselves over the table once again.

  Avrel leaned forward and laid a hand on each of their arms.

  “Here, you two, that’s enough.” He pushed them back to their seats.
“You’re, neither of you, angry at each other, only at what Minorca’s about. There’s no defense of this, is there, Grubbs? And there’s nothing right about it, nor anything to make it so.”

  Grubbs met his eye for a moment, then shook his head. “No. No, it ain’t.”

  He and Detheridge sat back, returning to their silence while Avrel pondered their situation.

  The cargo was all aboard, and Minorca set sail, with the other merchantman off in its own direction. He’d seen that while out on the hull making sail. He’d also seen that the second ship, the well-armed ship, kept pace with Minorca. Hanging off her stern like an escort.

  Or a guard.

  He was drawn from his thoughts by Captain Morell’s arrival. The captain took his place at the fore of the berthing deck to speak, Turkington at his side and Hobler with his mates between the officers and crew. Avrel noted Kaycie wasn’t present, and wondered at that, before Morell began speaking.

  “All right, lads,” he said, “it’s been a rough day, I know. There’s none of us pleased by today’s events, but we’ll get through this as a crew, I assure you. Some of you have sailed through the Barbary before, some on Marchant ships — and you’ll know that Marchant ships are the safest to make that journey on. There’s no pirates in the Barbary who’ll take on a Marchant hull.

  “Well, that’s not only for the Marchant’s size and guns, you’ll have realized now. There’re deals to be made out here, and they’re not all wholesome and clean, but it’s what keeps our hulls and crews safe where others aren’t. This trip is one of those — you make this sail, just a few more weeks, and you’ll be keeping other Marchant crews, men and women you’ve sailed with before, free and clear in the Barbary, you hear?”

  Morell cleared his throat.

  “There’s coin in it, too, for those of you who care — and that’ll be most of you, I think, when the journey’s done. When this cargo’s off Minorca and we’re on to Hso-hsi, the pay in your accounts’ll taste just as good as any.”

  His face grew stern.

  “But I’ll have no complaints. This cargo’s gone at our next stop and then we’re done with it. I’ll see any man who makes trouble before then put in-atmosphere — with no shares and no recommendation. Put out at our next stop, you hear?”

  Avrel noted Grubbs blanch, as did no few others, as the implications of that sank in.

  If their next stop was the destination for this cargo, then that would be no normal system. There’d be no legitimate merchantmen to take sail with after Minorca, even leaving aside the loss of, perhaps, years’ worth of shares in previous voyages. There’d be no ship and little money for one of Minorca’s crew put in-atmosphere at that port.

  Morell cleared his throat again.

  “You’ll note Miss Overfield is not present,” he went on. “She has taken exception to this voyage and our cargo. Exception which has gone beyond what I will tolerate.” He took a deep breath. “My expectations for my officers are the same as for you, my crew. As such, Miss Overfield has been dismissed from the Marchant Company, she is confined to her quarters, and will be put in-atmosphere at our next destination.”

  THE SPOT GRUBBS had mentioned was well known to the crew. A squared-off area between the crates and vats of supplies that kept Minorca and her crew running for months in the Dark. The vats were tall and the crates stacked high, so that the light was dimmer inside the little area, about four meters on a side. One entered through either a narrow space between two vats, having to crawl at the middle, because the vats bulged out to meet there, or by sliding a crate, mysteriously left aboard an anti-grav pallet, aside to form a larger opening.

  The latter had already been moved when Avrel arrived, slid back into the hold’s main walkway.

  Avrel made his way between the two crates to either side of the opening and was surprised, though he supposed he shouldn’t have been, to find more than his messmates in the space.

  There were six others there, standing or squatting with Detheridge, Grubbs, and Sween. Four women and two men, each from a different mess. A couple Avrel knew well, while a couple others he had only a passing acquaintance with, despite so long aboard ship together — those two were on the opposite watch and kept to themselves, in any case. The last two, Presgraves and Rosson, were two of the last Avrel’d expect to have come to this meeting, though.

  Rosson was a hard man and didn’t strike Avrel as the sort to worry all that much about where his coin came from. Presgraves was the same, but Avrel could understand her change of heart. The presence of so many women amongst the “cargo” had shaken more than a few of Minorca’s crew from their apathy about this voyage.

  He stopped in the entryway and raised his brows in query to his mates. Sween and Detheridge came over and they put their heads together so the others couldn’t hear.

  “Are you certain of them?” Avrel asked.

  “They’re all of like mind,” Detheridge said, and Sween nodded agreement.

  “And her?” Avrel nodded in Presgraves’ direction. “Is she reliable? I mean, what with —”

  “She’s a good hand,” Sween said. “I mean, sure, she’s quick to fight a bloke … and she’s been up before the captain more than once for a roll in the hold, but that’ s only for the ship being so long a’space and she gets a bit … twitchy, I guess.”

  “Twitchy?”

  “The lass likes her sport.” Sween shrugged. “And those charges on Pemsey weren’t nothing — why, she’s only to be gone from the system for six months and there’s nothing more said about it.”

  “So, you vouch for her?”

  Sween opened his mouth, then closed it and frowned. “Now, I wouldn’t be going so far as vouch, now as I think on it, but —”

  “She’ll do for carrying word back to her mess,” Detheridge said. “And that’s all we’re about just now, yes?”

  “Yes,” Avrel agreed. “All right, then.” He stepped into the cleared space where the others waited. “So, you’re all of like mind?”

  “Aye,” a few of them said, nodding.

  “And our mates, as well,” Presgraves said, “though we thought it best only one come from each for this.”

  Avrel nodded, suddenly wondering what, exactly, “this” was to be and how these newcomers and their mates had discovered that before he himself had.

  He settled his back against one of the crates and looked at the others, who were all looking at him.

  “What?”

  Detheridge frowned. “This is all that’s coming. Hadn’t you best get started?”

  Avrel frowned back. “What, me?”

  NO MATTER that the others seemed ready enough to let Avrel “start”, they weren’t about to let him finish.

  He’d no more laid out the bones of their complaint than they’d begun to flesh it out with plans. Presgraves’ desire to blow Minorca’s fusion plant as a last resort was not the maddest of the lot.

  “Violence will get us nowhere,” Avrel said. “Not with that sloop off our stern. She outguns Minorca in both numbers and weight, and likely out-mans us, as well.”

  “Well, there’s no ‘pretty, please, and may I’ going to work with Morell on this,” Presgraves said.

  Avrel nodded, noting as well that none of those in the group had been referring to the captain as Captain or Captain Morell — no, it was “Morell” alone, and that spoke volumes of where their minds were. Minorca no longer had a captain that this group served.

  “No, but it’ll do us no good to …” He trailed off, as none of them had yet really spoken the words — they’d danced around it, but not said it outright. He sighed. Minorca and his current situation were so far removed from what he’d thought his life would be years ago at school.

  All those classes, but never a one on this.

  He took a deep breath.

  “It’ll do us no good to take the ship —” He noted that more than one in the group winced as he spoke the words, knowing, as he did himself, that they, this group, were now fully
liable to be hanged if they were ever found out. Even if they did nothing, he’d just spoken mutiny and they’d heard the words without dragging him to the captain immediately. Even Presgraves’ talk of the fusion plant had been so couched in hyperbole that it could be argued as just malcontented talk. “No good at all to take the ship if we’re then retaken by that sloop. We need to be patient and plan.”

  He met each of their eyes in turn. No one looked away from his gaze, but none seemed happy by where they were either.

  Perhaps this wasn’t the way, he wondered. Perhaps they should all just go back to their bunks and suffer through this voyage. He could jump ship at whatever system Kaycie was put off on and make his way with her —

  A noise, barely audible, caught his attention and he was moving before he even thought.

  He caught sight of the others’ widened eyes as he spun and rushed between the crates that formed the entry way.

  It was only as he caught sight of the figure in the hold’s main aisle, crouched and peering around the crate’s corner, that he realized he’d heard the shuffle of a boot against the deck. Only as he recognized Hobler, straightening now, face angry and mouth contorting to shout, that he realized they were found out.

  Hobler stood, turning to shout for the guards near the slave compartments, and Avrel lunged.

  He thought only to silence the man and gain a bit of time to think and talk to the others, but Hobler leaned away. The lean threw him off balance, his feet tangled, and Avrel’s lunge to grapple and place a hand over his mouth turned into a shove.

  Hobler was flung backward. His neck, just below his skull, hit the edge of the crate, as though Fate itself had stepped in to ensure the worst possible outcome.

  There was a thud and a sickening crack.

  Hobler collapsed to the deck, Avrel atop him.

  Avrel knew in an instant that the man was dead. The feel of the body under him had lost all sense of humanity even before they’d come fully to rest.