Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Box Set Read online

  “How are you getting out of the school so late?” Jon asked.

  Wyne grinned broadly. “I poached a professor’s hatch code.”

  “Which one?” Jon was a bit in awe. That code would allow them to enter and leave the school compartments at will — any time of day or night. Such a code would have been the holy grail of his time at Lesser Sibward and now he was missing it.

  “Might be that Smallidge left his office and computers unlocked when he was in such a hurry to reach the loo … and hasn’t been back to them since. Something about a leave of absence …”

  Jon laughed, then sobered. He looked at his two friends.

  “Thank you. Both of you.”

  Kaycie patted his leg, which he almost wished she wouldn’t do, since her touch felt like it set him on fire. He shifted uncomfortably.

  “We tried to message you,” she said, “and didn’t know what to think when you didn’t respond. Then Wyne reasoned out that the school was blocking your address in the systems. He thought to check Smallidge’s office, which got us the code, and we came looking for you.” She frowned. “Had a time of it finding you.”

  “So, we’re here to help now,” Wyne said. “What’s the plan?”

  Jon looked at them, confused. “Plan?”

  “Surely you have a plan?” Kaycie said.

  “I suppose I’ll keep trying to find a berth aboard some ship,” Jon said. “At first I thought to take passage to Greater Sibward, but hadn’t the coin for it. They wouldn’t accept me as crew on so short a run — wanted a longer contract. By the time I was desperate enough for anything, that ship had sailed, though.” He looked down at where his fingers were picking at the sheet between his legs.

  Kaycie caught his hands in hers and shook them.

  “No, Jon, your plan.”

  He looked up and met her eyes. She seemed to be expecting something of him, but he couldn’t imagine what. How was he to plan anything other than to accept the first berth that would take him? He had no funds to speak of. Wyne and Kaycie would have a bit of their allowances, but not enough to keep him for long and he wouldn’t ask it of them. He’d had no word of his family and no way to contact them. What plan?

  Kaycie squeezed his hands again and gave him a little smile.

  “You always have a plan, Jon. Every bit of mischief we’ve been about these last two years has come from you.”

  She glanced over at Wyne who nodded at him.

  “What do you need and how can you go about getting it?” she asked. “Surely the great Jon Bartlett is not prepared to admit the universe is cleverer than him?”

  Jon looked away. She was expecting too much of him. Pranking a teacher was one thing, but for this … for this, even leaving aside the cost, he needed a ship to be bound for Greater Sibward and there were none in port. He started to say so — to tell her it was easy enough for her to say that, when all she had to do tonight was slip back into the school and then slip back into her bunk and wake to her life that hadn’t been upended as his had been.

  He paused.

  Slip back into the school. The Lesser Sibward Merchant Spacer Preparatory School. The one that taught them how to sail the Dark between star systems, along with all the bits about cargo and finances. He needed a ship.

  He caught her eye, surprised at the real concern he saw there. For a moment, he thought it might be something more, but then the corner of her mouth quirked up and she grinned.

  “That’s the look of my Jon,” she said. “You’ve got something now. What’s the plan?”

  “Bloody madness,” Wyne muttered.

  Jon had his tablet out as they marched boldly through the school corridors. This late at night there was no one roaming the halls and the prefects relied on the cameras and motion sensors to alert them. Wyne’s and Kaycie’s codes let them into the school and Jon’s tablet was still able to control the cameras. The headmaster might have locked him out of the school’s messaging system, but no one had known he’d hacked his tablet into a dozen others over the years. They’d only shut him out of the systems he’d had legitimate access to.

  “They’ll hang us, you know?” Wyne muttered again.

  “Put a stopper in it, Wyne,” Kaycie whispered.

  “It’s piracy!”

  “It’s not,” Jon said. “I looked it up. It’s only piracy if the ship’s crewed and a-space. This is simple theft. Hijacking at the worst.”

  “Simple theft of a whole bloody skiff,” Wyne said. “What’s the value? Three hundred pounds? We’ll be transported for sure!”

  “It’s only me on the hook, really,” Jon said. “They’ll never even know you two were with me once I sail it away.”

  Wyne shook his head. “You’ll never make it. It’s a week’s sail to Greater Sibward — and that’s in a proper ship. Two weeks in a skiff and skiffs aren’t even supposed to leave a system, you know that!” He skipped ahead of Jon and Kaycie and turned to face them, walking backward. “You’ll miss it all entire, go Dutchman, and be lost in the Dark.”

  “Wyne,” Kaycie said, “this is what Jon needs to do and I’m helping him. You either help along with me or bugger off, but either way put a bloody sock in it, will you?”

  “I’m just saying —”

  “Well, stop saying.” Kaycie ran her hand over Jon’s back. He’d noticed she was touching him a great deal — not that he minded at all, it was simply confusing him. “He needs our help, not your naysaying. Now are you in or out?”

  “In,” Wyne grumbled, but turned to walk with them.

  They made one stop at the school’s galley, loading a second bag with supplies for his journey, then made their way to where the skiffs were docked. The school’s private quay was every bit as deserted as the rest of the corridors. The half dozen hatches lining the outside of the corridor were all closed, but the viewports next to each were clear, showing the craft docked there. He’d honestly prefer to take one of the larger craft on such a long journey, but they’d be too hard to crew alone. A skiff could be crewed by one and should be able to make the trip. He had food enough, so long as he didn’t — as Wyne seemed convinced — miss Greater Sibward all entire.

  Jon checked his tablet once more. Everything was as it should be, sending out the signal so that the corridor and hatch sensors saw nothing, heard nothing, and, most importantly, reported nothing. He chose a hatch at random. All of the skiffs were the same.

  He set his bag down and examined the dock’s hatch. He’d never actually worked with any of the airlock hatches before and wanted to make sure there wasn’t something different about it.

  “Did you hear that?” Wyne whispered.

  Jon listened for a moment. Wyne was probably just being a paranoid again. Then he heard it too, a soft tap, as of someone trying to walk stealthily and putting one step down a bit too hard on the deck.

  “Bloody —”

  He looked around to find somewhere they could hide, but it was too late.

  “Ha!”

  Thornton Peavey, Jon and Wyne’s roommate, rounded the corner and caught sight of them. He pointed at them, a wide, satisfied grin on his face.

  “I knew it! Knew you were up to something, Wyne!” He pointed at Jon. “And you’re expelled! When the headmaster finds out you broke in you’ll be lucky not to face charges!”

  “Peavey, shut up!” Wyne said.

  Peavey stalked up to them.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I want to enjoy this moment, I do.”

  Jon’s stomach felt like it was filled with lead. It was all over. Even if he could get onto the skiff and away now, he’d never make it out of the system. Peavey would alert the headmaster and they’d send a station patrol boat after him. He’d likely not even make it to a transition point.

  “Look, Peavey,” he said. “I made them help me, right? Just let Wyne and Kaycie go and I’ll come with you to the headmaster.”

  He likely would face charges, though breaking into the school was less to be caught at than if he’d
managed to undock the skiff before being found out.

  Thankful for small things, I suppose.

  “What? And give up seeing all three of you be expelled?” Peavey grinned. “No chance of that.”

  Kaycie had been oddly quiet since Peavey arrived, she usually was when he was around for some reason, but now she gave Jon a strange look and seemed to straighten her shoulders. He could see the corners of her jaw tighten, as though she’d found some inner resolve. She stepped up to Peavey.

  “What, little miss? You have something to —”

  Jon and Wyne gasped in shock, but not as loudly as Peavey did as Kaycie drove her knee up into his fork.

  Peavey doubled over, knees bent and clutching himself. Strange, strangled sounds emerged from his mouth, but he seemed to be having a great deal of trouble breathing.

  Kaycie bent close to his head and whispered so low that Jon wasn’t sure he heard correctly.

  “Do you remember my first year, Peavey? Well I’m no longer a scared girl just away from home for the first time. You bugger off and keep your mouth shut, or the headmaster’ll hear about more than this business, you hear me?”

  “You … ruddy … bitch …” Peavey rasped.

  “I can’t quite hear you,” Kaycie said. She grasped his shoulders to help him stand. “Here, straighten up a bit. It’ll help you breathe.”

  “Bloody … bitch …”

  “That’s what I thought it was.”

  Kaycie took a step back, then swung her foot up hard. Peavey made a croaking sound, his eyes bulged, and he toppled to the floor.

  She bent and whispered to Peavey again, but Jon couldn’t hear this time. He shared a look with Wyne who seemed as shocked and puzzled as he was.

  “Right, then,” she said, turning to them. “Jon, you get the lock open. Wyne, you wait out here and see Peavey doesn’t cause more trouble. I’ll see Jon in.”

  “Aye, aye,” Wyne said, seemingly without realizing it.

  Jon raised an eyebrow, but turned back to the hatch’s lock.

  It seemed to have nothing special about it and soon yielded to his tablet. It slid open and he shouldered his bag. Kaycie hefted the bag of food and followed him in.

  “What was that about?” he asked as the station-side hatch closed and they waited for the skiff’s hatch to cycle. “What’d he do your first year?”

  Kaycie flushed and looked down at the deck. “You heard that? Bugger.”

  They entered the skiff. It was a small craft and had only one compartment. The fusion plant and engineering controls were at the rear. A navigation plot with integrated signals took up most of the space in the center and there was a small galley along one bulkhead with two bunks along the other.

  Jon had a moment’s apprehension. A craft this size was meant for intrasystem sails. A few days in darkspace at most and never away from where its optics could pick up the lights of a pilot boat or beacon. The two-week sail to Greater Sibward was quite another matter. He’d be wholly reliant on his own skills as a navigator to not miss the target system entirely. Moreover, he’d be spending most of that time in his vacsuit, as he’d have to move in and out of the ship to adjust the sail.

  He tossed his bag toward the bunk and started checking the engineering systems. Kaycie set the bag of food near the galley and joined him.

  “So?” he asked.

  Kaycie sighed. “It’s nothing really.”

  “Not nothing if it warrants a blow like that to the bollocks, it seems to me.”

  “It’s nothing. He cornered me in the corridor outside the gymnasium my first week.” She sighed again. “A bit of a grope — nothing to it, really.”

  “Bastard!”

  Kaycie stiffened. “And there it is. Thank you for your outrage on my behalf, but I’ve no need of it.”

  “I only meant —”

  “Know what you meant.”

  The engineering systems were online and she turned from him to check the navigation plot.

  He stared at her back for a moment.

  “Why didn’t you go to the headmaster then and get him expelled?”

  Kaycie snorted. “Really? There’s a chance of that, I suppose, but his family’s far wealthier than mine. He’s, what, sixth generation Lesser Sewer? Headmaster’d believe us over him? And then, of course, everyone would know.”

  “Us?”

  She left off the navigation plot and went to the galley area, starting to unpack his supplies. “I know of two other girls — one went further. We try to warn the first years about him.” She turned to him with a wan smile. “Bit of a club, really.”

  Jon hesitated, uncertain what to do. He wanted to wrap her up in his arms and tell her it would be all right — at the same time he wanted to rush back into the corridor and pound Peavey’s face into the deck.

  “Kaycie —”

  “And there it is, see? It’s either that look and that tone, ‘Oh, poor you, it’ll be all right, let me make it better.’ Or the other, that we’re not believed and must’ve done something to lead the poor bloke on. That’s why we don’t say anything, isn’t it? It’s never the same after someone hears — can’t be just Jon and Kaycie —”

  She broke off and scrubbed at her eyes.

  Jon stood still, afraid to move.

  “Damn him for showing up,” Kaycie said. “This isn’t how this bit was supposed to go.” She walked up to Jon and pulled something from her pocket with a wan grin. “Look, I made you something to see you off.” She reached up and slipped a bit of black cloth around his head, blocking one of his eyes with it. “Proper pirate, right?”

  “I told you, it’s only common thef —”

  He broke off, eyes wide, as she grasped his face and kissed him. Then he closed his eyes and fell into the kiss, which was really quite good, he thought, even given his limited experience for comparison. Better than the kiss, even, was the feel of her body against his, and as soon as the shock wore off he reached to wrap his arms around her and make that even better.

  But before he could, the kiss ended. Kaycie released his face and dashed past him to the hatch, sliding it open and calling back, “I expect to see you again, Jon Bartlett.”

  Jon stared at the closed hatch for a long moment, then reached up and pulled the eyepatch from his head. He raised a finger to his lips, which still seemed to feel the press of hers. He shook his head slowly.

  “I will never in life understand girls.”

  “You look a fright, lad, have you eaten?”

  Jon took his Uncle Wyatt’s offered hand. He supposed he did look frightful.

  He’d arrived at Greater Sibward without incident and docked the skiff at the public quay. It would be investigated once it was seen to have been docked there past the time limit and someone would contact the school to see about its return.

  Since then, though, things had gone poorly.

  It seemed as though the family had scattered, disappearing from both the station and planet, and even long time employees and associates neglected to return his calls and messages.

  He’d sold his better clothes and other things for a few coins to keep him going just a bit longer. He was down to under a pound, all told, and despairing that he’d find work or a way off Greater Sibward. Light as his pack was now, with just a single change of clothes, vacsuit, and his tablet, he’d likely have to sell those as well soon. It seemed that any time a ship’s master learned his name, there were suddenly no positions available.

  It had been with some relief that he’d finally received a response from one of his many messages to family members. Uncle Wyatt was still in-system, but not in the home Jon remembered. To Jon’s relief he’d responded and agreed to meet, but the expression on his uncle’s face didn’t allow that relief to last long.

  Uncle Wyatt took his arm and steered him down the corridor.

  “There’s a pie shop around the corner. You need to eat.”

  They got their pies at the counter, Wyatt insisted Jon get two, found seating, then s
at with only the sounds of their eating until Jon had finished.

  “I’m so sorry, lad, I can’t begin to say.”

  “Uncle Wyatt …” Jon thought he had a million questions, but suddenly found that they call came down to one. “What happened?”

  Wyatt winced.

  “I tried to get a message to you, lad, I did. But by the time it reached your school you’d already gone.”

  “They threw me out as soon as word came.”

  Wyatt winced again.

  “Why didn’t anyone send for me earlier?”

  “You have to understand, Jon, it was eight weeks of hell. That’s all it took, you see, start to finish. Five generations to build and eight bloody weeks to end us.” He sighed. “By the time we saw how bad it was, we went to bed every night exhausted from fighting it and woke up the next morning to find it worse than before. You were safe at school, we thought …”

  “What happened?” Jon repeated.

  “It was so damned quick,” Wyatt said. He toyed with his fork, pushing a bit of crust around his plate, making trails through the gravy. Jon started to ask again, but then simply waited. He could tell it was hard for his uncle and he’d get the story in good time.

  “At first it was the stock,” Wyatt said finally. “Blocks were being sold off, more than usual, and the price started falling. Not much at first, just a bit. We, your parents and I, found it odd — profits were up, we’d just sent a dividend. The company was strong.

  “Then it was more than blocks being sold, there were short sales — someone without the stock selling at a lower price than it was listed. That made no sense, for they were always so far below the market that … someone would have to buy at a higher price to sell at the lower. It was madness, but it drove the price of the stock down further.

  “Edward, your father, bought some, to keep the price up … we all did, really. Everyone in the family, we bought and bought. And with company funds, too. Why not? The shares were far below their value by that time and we knew Bartlett Shipping was strong. But it kept going, down and down, and we didn’t have enough ready cash to buy more shares.”