Chapter 18
They lined up along the table, as defined by protocol awaiting the captain. His seat was flanked by José and an eager middle aged man who was going prematurely bald. The old man took up his station next to José with Squirrel across from him. A young woman stood next to her with O’Riley opposite. A young man, apparently associated with the young woman took the chair next to O’Riley with M’Elise opposite. A variety of colorful passengers filled out the rest of the table.
A bosun’s whistle rung out and the Captain appeared, sauntering amongst the passengers, smiling at all. He arrived at his chair and with the swish of expensive fabric the room sat. Waiters swiftly arrived to pour wine and serve food.
“The nice thing about traveling in style is that you can get just what you want,” said the old man, poking at something white and pasty on his plate. “Well, maybe not what I want, but what I can digest.” Squirrel gave him a look that would whither deck plate. O’Riley dropped down a bottle of hot sauce in front of him, none too gently. The old man sighed expansively.
Squirrel continued to glare at him ignoring the woman to her right who tried to strike up a conversation with her. Failing, she tried M’Elise who asked her what business she was traveling on. This delighted the woman who explained in great detail, with occasional supplemental information from the young man, encouraged by M’Elise’s stiffly feigned interest.
O’Riley watched her concerned, but turned back, passing another acidic spice to the old man. The old man sighed expansively again and shook his head. “You people should really learn to recognize when someone is trying to help you.”
“Seriously?” said Squirrel a little louder than she wanted. The man to her left was distracted briefly, but quickly turned back to the captain. “And what exactly were we supposed to recognize as help? Was it when you convinced us to go to Van Cove and pick up two assassins? Or when you neglected to inform us that the head of this sector’s Cooperative was looking for us personally? Or when it slipped your mind to mention that he was your grandson?” She was holding her flatware in a death’s grip. “I’m really sorry but I’m finding a very hard time working out what part of that was help.”
He shrugged and continued to cut up the white gelatinous mass on his plate. “You’re alive aren’t you?”
“Every day we're alive and not bankrupt we count as a profit” said O’Riley. He very visibly palmed a steak knife into his jacket pocket. Leaning over very close to him he smiled in his face. Not kindly. “How about you?”
The old man looked up and raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been threatened by the best. Don’t even try.”
“Oh,” said O’Riley evenly. “I’m not even trying. T’would be a simple matter to change the suction on your cabin’s sewage pipe and suck your sorry arse down the crapper the next time you took a dump. I don’t give a shite whether you feel threatened by that prospect or not. I might just do it for fun.”
“And stress relief,” added Squirrel.
The old man looked disappointed, and ate a forkful, wincing as he swallowed. “I assure you, the pleasure you might receive from any scatological sabotage would be short lived.”
“Oh yes,” said Squirrel sarcastically. “Your Family. Big black booted boo-I’m-scary lugs would pull us limb from limb. There’s no point threatening the desperate. You’d still be dead and we wouldn’t care.”
The old man snorted. “They’d probably thank you, not help me. Just before they killed you.”
“Why would they care?” asked O’Riley. “They’ve got what they wanted.”
The old man swallowed another mouthful and washed it down with a sip of absinthe. “Then why is the José Fabuloso in port?”
The two of them blinked, stunned. José turned around at the mention and cheered “Fabuloso!” The old man smiled and raised his glass to him.
“What do you mean?” hissed Squirrel.
“How do you know?” asked O’Riley.
He shrugged. “I watched it arrive on the system traffic charts. Channel 12. It’s docked in berth 27B.”
“Why is it here?” asked Squirrel.
“They must not have found what they were looking for,” said the old man. He looked her in the eye.
“But we don’t have it!” said Squirrel.
“Neither, apparently, do they,” he said not looking away.
O’Riley started a string of curses. “You were right all along,” O'Riley said to Squirrel. “The police had it back on Port Newark. Now it’s drifting along with all the other space junk created by those terrorists you set us up to carry,” he elbowed the old man hard.
The old man spilled his absinthe and coughed. He turned and glared at O’Riley. “Not my plan. My twerp of a grandson is the one with the dramatic government eye catching flair. And he’s the one that is now looking for you. Not me.”
“Yeah,” said Squirrel, “you’re just in this for spite.”
“I’m not denying that,” said the old man. “But the point is that I’m in it. And on your side.”
“For now” growled O’Riley.
The old man nodded. “For now. Yes.”
Squirrel and O’Riley exchanged glances. O'Riley looked to M’Elise but she was just staring into the middle distance, nodding occasionally. He tried to catch her eye, but she was beyond noticing, or chose not to notice.
“What’s with her anyway,” said the old man, watching his glance. “I expected a tongue lashing from her fit to bring in the end times.”
O’Riley swung on him, grabbed his shoulder and said through gritted teeth. “Oh, I don’t know. Something about getting the crap beat out of you puts a bit of a damper in your style. How many beatings have you conducted? Supervised? Ordered? Ever participate in one? On the receiving side? Want to try? Then you might have an idea what it’s like.” He released him and was pleased to see he was shaking.
Waiters returned, whisked away plates and replaced them with new ones.
After a time and half a glass of water the old man had regained his composure. “I’m not proud of everything I’ve done’, he said simply. “Least of all, whom I handed the business over to. If I can put this right there will be a lot less of that sort of thing.” He indicated M’Elise.
“Supposing we buy your sob story,” said Squirrel, “which I’m not promising. What exactly do you think we should do?”
“Get your ship back” he said, like it was the most obvious thing.
“And how, precisely, do you think we could do that?” asked O’Riley, fingering the knife under his coat.
He shrugged. “You’re smart people. Or at least, unorthodox. I’m sure you could some up with some inventive way.”
“Then what,” said Squirrel. “What does that buy us?”
“Well,” he said slowly. “At least you wouldn’t be stuck in a large slow moving craft with a fixed itinerary that they can follow for as long as it takes.”
“We signed a two year contract,” said Squirrel. “We don’t have a lot of choice.”
At this the old man smiled. He leaned forward and lifted his glass to the Captain, who briefly returned the toast, caught up in some dramatic retelling of a gross traffic violation José was spinning. “I’ve had a word with the Captain. It won’t be a problem. The price for a full contractual release and good reference was smaller than I expected.”
O’Riley snorted. He looked at Squirrel, and then over to M’Elise meaningfully. “We’ll think about it” said Squirrel.
“We dock in six hours,” said the old man.
“No! We can’t!” said M’Elise plaintively.
“M’Elise, darling,” said O’Riley softly. He looked around at the rapidly emptying room. “They’re going to keep following us.”
“We’re sitting ducks here,” said Squirrel.
“No. We just need to keep our head down, play by the rules. Do what people say.” She looked close to tears. “No shore leave. Stay on the ship.”
“It’s OK,” said José.
“My son has a plan.”
“I don’t trust him as far as I can spit him,” commented O’Riley. “No offence Captain. But he’s got information and influence. We get off this ship with no mark on our record and a letter of recommendation. Come on?”
M’Elise still shook her head. Squirrel sighed expansively. “Look, we don’t have a lot of time. Jenniston is going to kick us out any second. How do you think I feel? This is my first real job. I’ve been here barely two weeks, just got a great prospect from upper management, and I’m facing skipping off to be chased up and down the space lanes by gun toting Cooperative goons. I don’t want to do this any more than you. But we don’t’ really have much choice.”
M’Elise looked miserable, glancing furtively as the remaining officers giving them meaningful stares as the last passengers emptied out.
José put his hand on her arm. “Captain José Fabuloso will project you, just like you protected me” he said solemnly. At this she hung her head and was lead out of the room with the rest.
It took the better part of a week to get their paperwork finalized, handover completed to new assignees, and the statutory exit interview. Half the delay was working a few extra of the worst shifts to buy favors to cover having them, and their worldly remains, smuggled off ship in the laundry. But finally they stood amongst the crates and boxes of their stuff in a back alley off of the Aravaca dockside, the powerful smell of bleach billowing out from the laundry service that was processing the Rich Kingford’s linens and eyeing them with great suspicion.
“Thank god it’s alright,” said Squirrel unwrapping the espresso machine and checking it.
“I’m just fine too, thanks for asking,” said O’Riley.
“You haven’t saved me from a fate worse than death,” she patted the box. “Each time those bitches started talking about how it was the junior most’s job to clean the toilets for the first three months of duty for the rest of their dorm I just started filling them up with espresso.”
They did quick inventory of their belongings as O’Riley pulled his hood up over his face and ventured onto the dockside to pick up a platform and palette truck. They loaded it up and moved away from the laundry service. They stopped at a back street chai shop and huddled over a teapot.
“So what’s the plan?” asked Squirrel.
“The Fabuloso is in berth 27B, just like the old fart said,” reported O’Riley. “The dockhand I tipped said it’s fueled up, but no cargo, no passengers. He seemed to think it had plenty of crew though. Said they were cozy with a sloop docked in the A berth.”
They looked expectantly at M’Elise, but she just stared into her tea cup.
“Can we just ask them to leave?” said José. “It’s our ship after all.”
“I’m thinking they’d rather shoot us than just give us the ship back,” said O’Riley.
“I think he has a point,” said Squirrel enthusiastically. “They seem to mostly have contempt for the law. They may not have transferred ownership. José may still be the official Captain. We could evict them! How about it M’Elise? Do you think you can do the paperwork magic on that?”
M’Elise shrugged despondently. “I suppose.”
Squirrel look at her with annoyance. “You shipped cadavers eight parsecs. You go on about it all the time. An eviction notice should be simple.”
“Go easy on her,” said O’Riley with a warning glance. “Just go easy on her.”
She glared at him. “So you think of something.”
He thought for moment. “We could get them really drunk.” José cheered and Squirrel rolled her eyes. “No, really. Say we invited them to a bar to negotiate and challenged them to a drinking contest. If they win, they get the sapphire. If they lose, we get the ship. No way can they beat me.”
“Yeah, because of all your practice? Forgive me if I’m unwilling to bet my life on your expert alcoholism” Squirrel said skeptically.
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t have a bit of help.” He patted his overalls pocket. “You serve them, distract them with your feminine assets, and slip them the mickey.”
“Why don’t we just tell them we’re meeting in a bar to negotiate, and not turn up. While they are gone we take over the ship. You broke into it once, you can break into it again.”
O’Riley considered. “It’s not as much fun. But, I’ll admit, more practical. They aren’t going to leave the ship totally empty though. They’re dumb, but not that dumb.”
“Send them a candygram!” said José. They looked at him unbelievingly. He fished in a box and brought up a resealed parcel of industrial chocolate, then grinned widely.
O’Riley laughed loudly and cheered “Fabuloso!”
Squirrel smiled despite herself. “There’s something about deflating gravitas with farce that never gets old.”
“Wait till it catches up with you,” muttered M’Elise into her teacup. But she was not heard over the laughter.