Pilot Light

‘We need a pilot,” Keiji said.

Johan laughed for very long time. Keiji sighed. Chase poured himself another scotch. The dogs were fighting over a rag toy in front of the fireplace. From the kitchen came the sound of clanking plates and running water as Anna Marie did the dishes.

“Are you done?” Keiji asked irritably, as Johan wiped tears from his eyes.

“You’re telling me,” the junkyard owner wheezed, “that you boys have been sitting out in my back forty fixing up that piece of crap for over a year and you never once thought you should try to find a pilot?”

“Yes,” Chase said sharply. “Quite stupid, don’t you think?”

“Do you know where we can find a pilot or not?” Keiji asked.

Johan shrugged, and reached down to scratch one of the dogs behind the ears. “You’d have to talk to someone else about that. I only go through captains and dealers. There’s listings on the net. Or you could try talking to the harbourmaster over Andapol way. But I’ll tell you now, boys, you’ll be stretching to find a pilot who knows how to fly the Swan.”

“What do you mean?”

Johan frowned. “When I call her an antique, I’m not joking. She was built in the Jovian War. Still has a stonewall interface. Pilots these days don’t know how to fly like that. They’re used to nanyte links, working direct with ATC and the ship’s AI. The Black Swan doesn’t even have an AI. Hell, I’m surpised stonewall is still legal.”

“That’s something you might have brought to my attention before you sold it to me,” Keiji said, rubbing his temples.

“Just install a new system,” Johan said. “You remodelled the entire engine room, didn’t you? Put those brand new McEwans in? This would be a snap after that.”

Keiji looked embarassed. “We’re running on a tight budget,” Chase said.

“So… how were you going to pay your pilot?”

 

 

Black Swan Story #03

PILOT LIGHT

The nameless twenty-four hour diner at the corner of Wutei Avenue and Bower Street was one of Aaru’s most enduring institutions: a classic American burger joint, with a long row of booths beneath wide glass windows, and a wait staff comprised entirely of surly single mothers. The food was bad and the atmosphere was worse. Keiji kept coming back to it simply to see which transgression against basic customer service would happen next.

It was late afternoon, the day after their dinner with Johan. He and Chase had spent the day apart, each of them researching and tracking down separate leads for pilots, and had arranged to meet at five o’clock. Chase was now an hour late. Keiji passed the time by scanning the net. He’d posted an employment ad on several sites the previous night, which had received zero replies after nearly twenty-four hours. He was beginning to feel somewhat depressed.

“Excuse me,” Keiji asked the waitress, “I ordered a cheeseburger, is that… coming soon?”

“Maybe,” she said.

He sighed, and looked out the window at the drizzly panorama of rain coats and umbrellas. Chase emerged from the throng of rush hour commuters with his hair slicked against his forehead. The bell above the door tinkled as he entered the diner, eyed the patrons at the counter, and slid into the seat opposite Keiji.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Fish market,” Chase said. “I thought somebody was following me, so I had to shake them.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Chase. It was a year ago. Nobody’s looking for you anymore.”

“Uh-huh. Can we swap seats? I want to face the door.”

Keiji rolled his eyes as they switched positions. “This is ridiculous.”

“Sure,” Chase said. “How did the harbourmaster’s office go?”

“Terribly. They kept me waiting for two hours and then I talked to an intern who laughed in my face when I said we needed a pilot who could fly stonewall. You?”

“Well,” Chase said, “I checked the Spacer’s Union, and they laughed at me too. One guy said nobody had flown a ship like ours since the Jovian War. And I realised he was right. There’s no point trying to hire somebody off the net or from a union. We’ll never find a guy that way. So,” and here he paused, with a smug grin on his face, “I went to the RSL.”

Keiji raised an eyebrow. “You went to the Retired Serviceman’s League.”

“Yeah. They have a Navy branch in Federation Quay. What? I thought it was a great idea.”

“There’s a problem with one of the three words in RSL,” Keiji said. “I’ll let you guess what it is.”

“So what if they’re retired? They still know how to fly. Maybe we can convince somebody to take it up again.”

“Well, fine,” Keiji said. “I don’t think it will work, but whatever, we can give it a shot. Did you find anyone who can fly stonewall? Anyone who’s willing to leave behind their pension check for a live-in job on a spaceship with a pair of twenty-something deadbeats?”

“Speak for yourself,” Chase said. “Anyway, I did one better than that – I found a guy who actually used to fly Anatidae class.” He opened his computer, and flashed the data over to Keiji.

“Asa Kingsford,” Keiji read aloud. “Born February 1st, 2121. Joined the Navy on his eighteenth birthday, graduated from flight school a year later, got assigned to the supply squadrons and spent six months flying the Whistling Duck between Ganymede and the asteroid bases. Honourable discharge after the war ended… what, that’s it? That’s all the flying this guy’s ever done?”

“That’s just his military record,” Chase said. “The guy I talked to at the RSL club said he kept flying freelance for ages.”

“I don’t know about this,” Keiji said. “I mean, yeah, he flew stonewall, but that was fifty years ago.”

“They still used it up until the sixties,” Chase said. “Look, we don’t have any alternatives, do we?”

“I guess not,” Keiji said. “I’ll give him a call.”

He punched in the pilot’s number, glancing up at the waitress as his cheeseburger arrived without any beef in it. “Uh, excuse me, I think you forgot… Oh! Hi, hello. Is this Asa Kingsford? My name’s Keiji DuVal. I’m the captain of a vessel called the Black Swan, and I’m looking for a pilot. I heard you used to fly one of her sister ships back in… uh, no. No, we got your number from the RSL club in Aaru. What? Uh, no.”

Chase ate some of Keiji’s fries, and studied the puzzled look on his face.

“No… no. Uh, about three years. She’s in a junkyard, but I’ve been fixing her up, and I’ve got her fully registered and licensed. Just need a pilot. Haha, yes, well we’ve been having a bit of trouble finding one. I haven’t upgraded the flight system, so she’s still stonewall. Engines are brand new… what? Uh… as soon as possible, I guess. As soon as we can get a pilot… yeah, absolutely. I’ll send you a map to the junkyard, we live in the ship, so we’re there all the time. Just ask the owner to take you out to us. Okay, great. See you then. Bye.”

He hung up, and looked at Chase. “That was weird.”

“Why?”

“He seemed pretty… suspicious. Then he warmed up and said he’d come out to meet us tomorrrow.”

“It didn’t sound like you talked about wages.”

“No. He didn’t seem to care. He was quite happy when I told him we wanted to leave as soon as possible…”

Chase laughed. “Oh, this should be good.”

#

The scheduled time for Kingsford’s job interview was noon. Keiji tried on several different outfits before settling on smart casual khakis and a tie. Chase tried his best not to laugh. They sat outside in the deckchairs in the shade of the ship, staring down the road towards the junkyard entrance and waiting.

Two o’clock came and went. “I’m calling him,” Keiji said.

“You’ll look desperate,” Chase said, cracking open his fourth beer.

“I am desperate.”

“He’s coming from Elysium City. Maybe he just didn’t realise how long it takes to get here.”

Keiji rang him anyway, and received no answer. He called again at four, and at six. He called Johan to check whether anybody had arrived at the main gate. Johan replied in the negative, and laughed at him.

“He just got held up,” Chase said, hurling his empty seventh beer bottle at the target they’d spraypainted on the rusting derelict opposite the Black Swan. It flew far wide and disappeared into the bushes. “It happens. Stop freaking out about it.”

“I’m not freaking out,” Keiji said. “This is important. It’s this guy or nothing, you realise.”

“No, it’s this guy or install a new flight system,” Chase said.

“You’re not the one who has to pay for it,” Keiji snapped.

“Chill out. We’ll get him. Call him again tomorrow and I’m sure he’ll just say he got lost on the way to Aaru.”

“How could somebody possibly get lost driving down the M2?”

“I dunno. He’s a pilot, not a navigator.”

#

Chase came down to the galley next morning to find Keiji staring at his computer screen. “Tell me you slept.”

“I’ve called him eight times!” Keiji said. “Eight! And I’ve messaged him! No response! Nothing!”

“Maybe he’s a little creeped out that his future employer has a crush on him,” Chase said, putting the kettle on.

“I do not have a crush on him.”

“Then why are you stalking him?”

“I’m not stalking him! I just want to know why he didn’t… aha!” A message icon had appeared on Keiji’s computer.

“Is that him?” Chase asked.

“No, I asked the RSL club for his address.”

“And they just gave it to you? Shit, what kind of….”

“Apartment 9A, 215 Maseru Street. Fantastic. Let’s go.” Keiji closed his computer, sprang from his seat and grabbed the keys to the jeep.

“Are you kidding me? First thing in the morning?”

Keiji gave him a look. “It’s one in the afternoon, you fucking sloth.”

“That’s… whatever. My point is, it’s a little weird that you’re hounding this guy because he didn’t show up to a job interview. It’s the kind of thing that might, y’know, put him off.”

“You didn’t talk to him. He was really eager. And now all of a sudden he’s just… disappeared. Radio silence. I just think something’s up.”

Chase sighed.

“Look, I’m your captain and this is my first executive order. We’re finding our pilot. Go put your shoes on.”

#

Elysium City, the fabled capital of Mars, sat inside the caldera of Elysium Mons at the centre of its namesake island continent. The highway from Aaru stretched gradually up and around the gentle slope of the extinct volcano, which rose fourteen kilometres into the upper atmosphere, the farmlands and orchards around them gradually replaced by redwood trees, then firs, then thick alpine grasses. Soon they were driving through a slanted landscape of nothing but bare red rock, but here the air became dangerously thin and regular traffic was funneled into a pressurised tunnel.

“I still say this is stupid,” Chase said.

“Duly noted,” Keiji replied.

“What are you even going to say to him?”

“I’m going to say we were in the neighbourhood and decided to drop by.”

“It’s an eight-hour drive. What could you possibly be in the neighbourhood for?”

“… A college reunion at ECU.”

“I thought you went to Marshall?”

“I did. But he doesn’t know that.”

“You’re wearing your Marshall sweatshirt right now.”

Keiji glanced down at the letters MARSHALL UNIVERSITY stencilled across his chest. “Shit. We’ll have to swap.”

Chase sighed. “Look, I’m not stupid. You think he’s in trouble with someone and needs to get off the planet quickly.”

“He wouldn’t be the first member of my crew who fits that description, would he?”

“Yeah, but you know I’m on the level, whereas he might be skipping town to avoid rape charges for all we know.”

“We’ll see.”

Chase gave up, and looked out the window. Emergency phones and overhead lights swept past with measured regularity as they gradually climbed up the tunnel towards the capital. Other cars slowly overtook them, or fell behind. Many were sports cars or limousines; probably senators and politicians returning from one last summer weekend on the beach in Aaru. After another few hours of driving through that murky world, the overhead lights rhythmically washing over the dashboard, the jeep emerged from the tunnel and into the city nestled in the caldera.

#

Elysium City had once been an administrative capital based in an impractical location on the sentimental whims of the first Martian president, but nearly a century later it was a city that had reached the limits of its growth. The caldera was only fourteen kilometres across, and skyscrapers and high rise apartment buildings were crammed into every bit of it, nestled right up against the caldera walls. Overhead, a glastic dome protected the city from the thin air and low temperatures; at the centre of the city, the Lake of Heaven provided the only gasp of open space amongst the forest of buildings.

Chase had been here once before, under more auspicious circumstances, arriving in a private ship rather than a dilapidated jeep. They’d approached the city from orbit, coming directly from Phobos, and he’d seen the huge column of light that burst out of the mountain’s summit before they crested the edge of the caldera, passed through the dome and saw the 24-hour neon spectacle laid out before them. Four million people crammed into an area the size of a single borough in Agassiz. It was an amazing city. Not somewhere he’d ever want to live, but an interesting place to visit.

Chase thought about how that first and last visit had ended, and realised his stomach was twisted.

#

EC was a planned city, streets and avenues radiating out from the central lake, all named after capital cities on Old Earth. The city planners and government officials had been quite biased towards their own ancestry, so while Washington Boulevard and Canberra Street and Ottowa Road were all important lakeside thoroughfares, the streets at the edge of the caldera – low-income zones full of tenements and ageing apartment buildings – were named Lome Street or Kigali Road or Bishkek Drive. Asa Kingsford’s apartment building was on Maseru Street, hugging the very caldera wall itself.

They parked the jeep in an asphalt lot behind a chainlink fence and ventured into the building. The elevator was out of order, so they climbed a stairwell that stank of rancid cooking, overhearing the occassional racuous argument in a foreign language. When they arrived at the apartment they found the door ajar, the wood around the handle splintered.

“Maybe we should go,” Keiji whispered.

“Oh, now you don’t want to see him?” Chase said. “We just drove eight hours, we’re not turning back now.” He pulled his Webley from the holster under his jacket, holding it in both hands and pointing it at the floor. Keiji looked at him as though he’d pulled a snake out of his armpit.

“Why the fuck do you have…” he started, but Chase shushed him, and gently pushed the door open.

The apartment consisted of only two rooms – a bathroom and a kitchen/living area with a fold-out bed. Both had been thoroughly ransacked, with drawers overturned and cupboards laid bare. Kingsford was nowhere to be seen, but once satisfied that the apartment was empty, Keiji turned on Chase again.

“What the fuck are you carrying a gun around for?”

“Protection,” Chase said. “And you know why. And since it looks like you were right, and your boyfriend is in a bit of trouble, you should be grateful.”

“I was assuming he was in trouble with the law!” Keiji hissed. “I don’t want you shooting a cop!”

“Last I checked, Mars was still a free planet. The police don’t just make people disappear like this.”

“Fantastic,” Keiji said. “Fantastic.”

“Hey, you were the one so keen to come rescue him,” Chase said, holstering the gun. “Don’t freak out now.”

“So who do you think it is?”

Chase snorted. “In a city this big? Any one of a dozen different groups. But we don’t have a chance of finding him.”

“So what do we do?”

“We go home,” Chase said.

Keiji didn’t say anything. “Shouldn’t we at least report this to the police?”

“They’ll find it for themselves sooner or later,” Chase replied. “Come on. We’ll get some dinner and then go home.”

#

They ate at an al fresco restaurant on the boardwalk at the edge of the Lake of Heaven, the chatter and clink of wine glasses drifting out over the city lights shimmering in the dark water. Chase could recognise quite a few of the other diners, including several MPs and the Attorney-General, and was feeling uneasy. Keiji had reccomended it, from one of his own trips to the capital, and Chase had agreed because he didn’t dare return to anywhere he’d previously been. Now he was wondering why they couldn’t just east at a cheap Chinese hole-in-the-wall out in Kingsford’s shitty neighbourhood.

“What are you doing?” he said irritably, after they’d placed orders.

Keiji had been scrolling through his computer ever since they’d arrived. “Just sending a few messages.”

“We can start looking for a new pilot tomorrow.”

“I’m not looking for a new pilot.”

“Then what are you doing?”

Keiji glanced up at him. “Well. I figured obviously whoever has him isn’t going to answer his phone. But messages are a different thing entirely.”

He flashed a file over to Chase, who opened it on his own computer. A message log.

- Is he still alive?

- I need him. Willing to pay.

- How much?

- How much does he owe?

“How do you know he owes them money?” Chase asked.

“I don’t.”

- He owes more than money.

- Will pay twice what he owes financially.

- $300 000?

- Acceptable

- Come to the Crown Restaurant, 37th floor, Rasmussen Tower. Ask for Mr. Ackerman.

Chase stared at the messages in disbelief. “Are you out of your mind?” he hissed.

“What?”

“Do you even have three hundred grand?”

“You know I do.”

Chase pinched the bridge of his nose. “Alright, let me rephrase that,” he said. “Can you afford to give away three hundred grand? And still launch a fucking spaceship afterwards?”

“Well, I’m not saying it wouldn’t be tight for a while,” Keiji said. “But, yeah, it’s possible. And I would expect Kingsford to work that off.”

“You don’t even…” Chase realised he was shouting, and lowered his voice as various members of Mars’ political elite glanced over at him. “You don’t even know what he did!” he hissed. “You don’t know what kind of a person he is! And you’re putting our savings on the line for him!”

“My savings,” Keiji said sharply. “And I know exactly what kind of a person he is. He is a stonewall pilot. He is possibly the last stonewall pilot on this entire planet. And that is all that matters to me, at the moment.”

“Fine,” Chase said. “But you have no idea what you’re fucking doing. You want to waltz into a meeting with an organised crime syndicate and tell them you’ll give them three hundred grand? And you think that’ll go perfectly OK?”

“Well, this is more your area of expertise, isn’t it?”

Chase sighed. “Alright, first of all, message them again. Tell them you’re not meeting them at the restaurant, you’ll meet them at a public area. They’ll bring Kingsford, and we’ll… how the hell do you even plan to give away that much money? Huge transactions like that get flagged and sent to the feds.”

“Not with my bank,” Keiji said. “Which public area?”

Chase thought for a moment. “The Grand Circus?”

#

In a volcanic caldera with limited landspace, Elysium City had long ago become a city of towering skyscrapers, glittering spires of glass and steel that rose all the way up to the pressure bubble. Walkways and high concourses had been developed between buildings to relieve ground traffic; they were joined by elevated trains and highways. Many citizens spent the bulk of their lives up in the air, going weeks at a time without needing to venture down to the ground.

The Grand Circus was the greatest and most famed of the city’s elevated roads, a pedestrian mall running in a tight ring around the Lake of Heaven, thirty storeys above the ground, lined with shops and restaurants and townhouses. The southern half, above Tokyo Road, was in the wealthiest part of the city and reflected the tastes of the locals: cigar shops, fine suits, massage parlours and jewellery stores.

It was not a place that suited casual browsing, and Chase was regretting choosing it for the meeting. He was walking slowly up and down along the inner end, pretending to be window shopping, but really keeping an eye on Keiji, who was loitering about a fountain in the middle of the concourse. The more he looked at Keiji – dressed in his work boots and jeans and university sweatshirt – the more uneasy he felt.

He was surprised. In contrast to himself, he had always thought of Keiji as a fairly law-abiding person. Not naïvely so – in fact, Chase sometimes suspected Keiji had taken him in because he knew he would need somebody willing to get dirty hands from time to time – but certainly not somebody willing to hand over $300,000 to a crime sydnicate.

“Not at my bank,” he’d said. What was that supposed to mean? Keiji’s family was loaded, Chase knew that. But they weren’t involved in anything sketchy. At least, nothing society officially condemned as sketchy.

He moved on to the next store, which sold fine wines. Keiji was still hanging out by the fountain. It was eleven o’clock on a weeknight, but in a city of this size, the arcade was still bustling with shoppers. That would make it hard for any thugs to pick Chase out, but it would also make it hard for him to pick them out. And he was pretty sure they’d have more than one.

“You ready to call this off yet?” Chase whispered into his computer. Keiji had opened a permanent audio link for the appointment.

“No,” Keiji said. “I can wait all night.”

“You know, you better hope these are serious people,” Chase said. “You better hope these guys are Mangala Tong or something.”

“Why?”

“Because for a serious group, three hundred grand is nothing. It’s a quick little deal that they won’t make a fuss about. A little group, though… they’ll be more highly strung.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“Wait,” Chase said. “Heads up, I think… yeah, look behind you.”

Approaching from the east was a group of three men, different from the crowd in that they surged forward with a purpose rather than strolling and wandering and looking in windows. One middle-aged Asian man in a suit, one fairly old man looking half-drunk, and one broad-shouldered man who was probably a bodyguard.

“You would be Mr. Kingsford’s mysterious benefactor?” the suited man asked, as the group arrived at the fountain. Chase held up a bottle of red wine, pretending to take intense interest but really peering past it to study the face of the man in the suit. It was familiar; he couldn’t put a name to it, but he definitely knew it.

“Yes.”

“This is him,” the suited man replied, nodding over at his half-drunk cohort. He wasn’t, Chase realised, drunk at all – they’d given him some kind of sedative. “Out of curiosity, why is he worth so much to you?”

“Because he’s a pilot,” Keiji said, before Chase could tell him not to.

“I see. Well. Do you have the money?”

“Three hundred thousand dollars, already transferred into a dummy account on Lucia. You give me Kingsford, I give you the access codes.”

The suited man looked half-amused and half-displeased. “We agreed on six hundred thousand dollars.”

“No we didn’t.”

“Yes,” he said patiently, “we did. You agreed to pay twice of what Mr. Kingsford owes us. I told you he owed us three hundred thousand dollars. Two times three hundred thousand is six…”

“I know what it is,” Keiji snapped. “You should have been more clear.”

Chase left the store and started slowly picking his way through the crowds towards the fountain. He could remember the man’s name, now: Cuong. A bit player when he’d last been here. Maybe still a bit player being sent on an errand, or maybe a hands-on manager. Would the man even remember him?

“Apologies,” Cuong said smoothly. “Nonetheless, I require six hundred thousand dollars in exchange for Mr. Kingsford’s freedom.”

“You don’t get to renegotiate like that!”

Chase quickened his pace.

“I am not renegotiating. Those were the original terms. If you don’t like them, the offer is off the table, and I will bid you a good evening.”

“Well, hang on. Maybe we can…”

It was at that point, about twenty metres from the fountain, that Chase suddenly felt a gun in his back.

“Easy, boy,” said a voice. “Don’t move. Mr. Cuong? I’ve picked up a familiar face…”

All eyes at the fountain were suddenly on Chase as he was walked up to join the meeting. Chase turned to glance at his captor; a low-level henchman whose face he didn’t recognise. Cuong’s eyes suddenly narrowed.

“What is this?” he demanded. “A trap?”

“No,” Chase said. “I don’t work for them anymore.”

“Who do you work for?”

“Oh, shit,” Keiji said.

“Him,” Chase said. “We’re not trying to screw you over. It was just a misunderstanding. Keiji, are you willing to pay six or not?”

“Uh,” Keiji said. “I don’t… it’s just, uh…”

“Shut up,” Cuong snapped. “I don’t believe this. This is bullshit. You’re both coming with us.”

“We’re not going anywhere with you,” Chase said.

“You have a gun in your back.”

“Yes,” Chase replied. “With a jacket draped over it. This is the Grand Circus. There are people everywhere. There are cameras and scanners everywhere. The headquarters of the federal police are about two kilometres away. You really want to start a fight here and now? Who has more to lose from that?”

Chase’s nerves were on fire. He could taste the moment delicately: his own adrenaline, Keiji confused and out of his depth beside him, Kingsford swaying and oblivious to everything around him, Cuong staring at him with anger and suspicion, the bodyguards carefully sizeing the moment up, shoppers milling about them and teenage couples flicking coins into the fountain and businessman emerging from after-work drinks at bars, all of them oblivious to the drama playing out in their midst. His muscles were coiled, ready to attack the man behind him, ready for the situation to erupt into chaos.

“If what I heard about you a few years ago was true, then you do,” Cuong said. “You’re coming with us.”

Chase whirled around and punched his captor in the face, grabbing his wrist at the same time to push the gun away. A few shots went off before he could knock it out of the man’s hands, barking out above the hubbub of conversation. Cuong and his other bodyguard darted for cover, pulling out their own weapons. Screams and and shouts rang out as the people around them began to flee, and a tsunami of panic swept down the arcade. Security shutters were activating and sliding down across storefronts all around them.

Chase had knocked his captor to the ground, a lucky strike, and scrambled for the man’s abandoned gun rather than draw his own in a public arena and risk having it tracked down from ballistics. Cuong had dropped backwards into the fountain, behind the low stone wall for cover – his bodyguard was scurrying to take shelter behind a set of rubbish bins. Chase fired a few shots at him that went wide, throwing his head around, looking for Keiji. The pilot, still drugged and woozy, had dropped onto all fours when the fight broke out – now, still vaguely aware of something bad happening, he was crawling in Chase’s direction.

“Keiji!” Chase yelled. “Keiji!”

Cuong suddenly darted out of the fountain, wet suit plastered to his body, and began dashing away from them down the concourse, towards the fleeing pedestrians. Chase levelled his gun at him, but before he could squeeze the trigger, Cuong yanked something from his jacket and dropped it in a sudden burst of light and sound.

Chase’s computer instantly went wild, coated in useless streams of nonsense data, and he winced against the ringing in his ears. He lowered the gun and watched Cuong and his remaining bodyguard sprint away, breathing heavily. A few people who were too shocked or confused to run away were staring at him, and he quickly tucked the gun inside his jacket. Keiji emerged from a landscaping display in a rustle of leaves.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded.

“A scrambler,” Chase said, grabbing Asa by the arm and pulling him to his feet. The pilot moaned in disorientation. “It fucks up all the electronics in the area, so the security sensors can’t…”

“I know what a scrambler is!” Keiji shouted. “I mean what the hell happened? Why did he know you? You said it was Agassiz you had to worry about! That’s on the other side of the fucking planet!”

“Oh, I got around,” Chase said tersely. He was trying to remember the layout of the Circus. The storefronts were now two blank walls of security shutters, and the last few pedestrian stragglers had fled the scene. The mall was deserted. There were escalators in the direction Cuong had fled, and elevators the other way. Which was more likely to have a response team coming up it?

“You got around,” Keiji said bitterly. “You could have warned me.”

Chase ignored him, and started running down the Circus, dragging the stumbling pilot behind him. Keiji followed in his wake, still fuming. Past the gleaming chrome doors, where the display showed an elevator at full occupancy rising up to meet them, probably bearing first responders. He went on past them to the display windows.

No doubt the architect had planned for the the glass windows of the Circus to display a splendid view of the city, but the reality of urban planning in a constricted city like EC had caught up with it, and the skywalk was now treated to a lovely view of the neighbouring offices. Between the buildings was a gap of about four metres, which Chase thought would be jumpable if they aimed for the next floor down. He levelled the thug’s cheap pistol at the glass and fired.

After the sound of cascading glass died away, the noise of the city began to seep in – honking cars, the whoosh of displaced air from a passing monorail, and the police sirens. Chase glanced down, a dizzying birds-eye view of several police cars at the edge of the road ten storeys below.

“You first, buddy,” he said, grabbing the pilot by the back of his shirt and hurling him across the gap into the office. Kingsford managed to overcome his drug-addled stupor long enough to shriek, before gasping in pain as he tumbled onto the carpeting one level below.

Chase turned to glance at Keiji, whose glare clearly read: “I would be screaming my head off at you if the cops weren’t five seconds behind us.”

They leaped across the gap together, cutting their hands on the broken glass as they landed heavily on all fours inside the office. Each of them grabbed one of Kingsford’s arms and hurried him along, away from the window, deeper into the maze of cubicles and desks and conference rooms.

A few moments later, a trio of beat cops burst out of the elevator, carefully covering each other with drawn handguns and moving down the Circus. Their colleagues on street level had reported seeing the fugitives leap into the skyscraper, and had immediately started making their way up the building after sealing off the ground exits.

But in Elysium City, the ground was only one of a hundred ways out.

#

“Who are you?” Kingsford croaked.

Chase turned around in the passenger seat. It had been four hours since their escape from Elysium City, and they were halfway back down the mountain to Aaru. It was still a few hours before dawn, and the car was illuminated only by the lights of the dashboard and the regular flick of the streetlights. After the chaos, Kingsford had slipped back into his drugged stupor. Keiji and Chase had tossed him in the backseat, burned out of Elysium City as fast as possible, and started shouting at each other.

“My name’s Keiji DuVal,” Keiji said, glancing in the rear-view mirror. “Captain of the Black Swan. This is Chase Benson, first mate. You missed a job interview with us yesterday.”

Kingsford sat up slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose and putting a hand on the shoulder of the driver’s seat. “Aw… yeah,” he mumbled. “Sorry, I… God, what happened to me?”

“We came to see you in Elysium City,” Chase said. “Only someone else had come to see you first.”

“Yeah…,” Kingsford muttered. “Yeah… I don’t really remember a lot.”

“They drugged you with something,” Keiji said. “We offered a trade but the meeting didn’t exactly go to plan. Not that we had much of a plan in the first place.”

“Oh, don’t start this again,” Chase said. “It was your goddamn idea to roll in there in the first place. If it wasn’t for me you’d be back up there on a meathook in a freezer.”

“What exactly happened?” Kingsford asked hoarsely.

“Well, we tried to pay them off in exchange for your safety, but things didn’t go to plan and we had a shootout on the Grand Circus,” Keiji said.

“What?”

“It was not a shootout!” Chase said. “They didn’t even shoot back, they just ran off!”

“Marvellous,” Keiji replied. “That will look good at the arraignment.”

“Look,” Chase said, “I’ll admit that it was in a pretty bad place, but trust me, ‘shots fired’ isn’t the most pressing thing on a detective’s to-do list. Nobody was injured, except that guy I punched – and there’s no way he’ll talk to the cops – and we didn’t even do that much property damage! So chill the fuck out.”

“Anyway, Mr. Kingsford,” Keiji said, glancing in the rearview mirror again, “we still have a position available, if the ship isn’t surrounded by a police cordon when we get back.”

“I think you can let me out right here,” Kingsford said.

Before Keiji could reply, Chase twisted around in his seat, glared at the pilot, and said: “I nearly got shot for you tonight, Mr. Kingsford, and my friend was willing to spend three hundred thousand dollars to secure your liberty. I think you owe us the courtesy of at least attending that job interview, which, by the way, you are now fifty-one hours late for. Why was that, anyway? Oh, I know about the debt collectors and all – I was there, with the shooting and the violence and the police and all that. I mean to say, why were you in trouble in the first place? Gambling? Or something else? Three hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money, and as I recall your Vietnamese friend told us you owed him “more than that.” So it seems, to me, that maybe you should spend a little more time considering an offer of a free ride on a private vessel off the planet.”

He turned back around. Kingsford glowered at him in the rear-view mirror. Chase turned the radio on.

#

“Alright. You’ve got me. I’m a gambler. Three hundred thousand might seem like a crazy amount, but you’d be surprised how quick it can mount up, with interest and all. I owe those boys money I can’t pay, and I could do with a quick way of getting out of here. But – now, I don’t mean to be rude – but this thing is a piece of shit.”

It was six o’clock in the morning, and the sun was peeking up over the pine trees. The three of them were standing on the flight deck of the Black Swan, sipping cups of coffee. Kingsford had spent the hour since they’d returned doing a thorough systems check on the ship, his eyebrows raising further with every passing minute.

“Look…” Keiji said.

“Ah ah ah,” Kingsford said, holding a hand up. “Now it’s not that it can’t fly, it’s that it shouldn’t. You’ve brought the systems up to the bare minimum safety requirements. You’ve cobbled brand new engines onto old parts without bothering to thread them properly. Your flight systems are a mess – a workable mess, but still a mess. You’re using very cheap, low-grade Ionese coolant. And you’ve got a cat onboard! Do you realise how much bad luck that is?”

“I heard good,” Keiji said, confused.

“God, no! You’re thinking of ocean ships.” Kingsford sighed, and took a long draught of coffee. “I understand you’re eager to leave, but as things stand I doubt we’d make it to Phobos. I reckon we spend another week or three to bring her up to scratch.”

“Well…” Keiji said reluctantly. “I guess that wouldn’t be too bad. I did have my doubts about the engine threading, and…”

“Oh, shit,” Chase said, staring out the windows. Keiji and Kingsford turned their gaze to match his. Down below, by the cold ashes of the campfire and the barbecue and the ratty folding chairs, a pair of black sedans had pulled up, and were disgorging a number of large men holding shotguns and pistols. One figure was immediately apparent, smaller than the others – Cuong.

Keiji immediately slammed his hand down on the cargo hatch controls.The doors groaned closed with a flaking of rust, a few of Cuong’s men slamming their hands against it in frustration as they failed to make it through in time. They began to fan out, surrounding the ship, searching for another way in.

Keiji’s computer beeped with an incoming call. It was Kingsford’s number, but the pilot’s computer was still in Cuong’s possession. He was standing by his car staring up at the flight deck windows and waving it at them.

Keiji answered it, and before the man could speak he said “You won’t get in. It’s a spaceship, so, it’s airtight.”

“We’ll try anyway,’ Cuong said calmly. “How much food and water do you have in there?” He looked around the junkyard. “This is a very deserted place. Why, someone could be here for months and nobody would ever know.”

Keiji muted his computer for a minute and glanced at Chase. “Call Johan and see if he’s OK. Get him to call the… shit. Well, at least tell him and Anna Marie to get to Aaru.”

He returned his attention to Cuong. “What do you want?”

“I’ll give you one guess.”

“We don’t have him,” Keiji lied. “He kept trying to get away from us in EC and with the cops after us we didn’t have the patience to chase him.”

Cuong snorted, and flashed a data-map to Keiji’s computer. “Don’t waste my time. How do you think we found you?”

Keiji whipped his head around to glare at Kingsford. “They put a tracker on you!”

“Well that’s not my fault!”

In the corner, Chase was on the phone to their landlord. “No.. it wasn’t… look… oh, fine! Call the cops!” He turned to look at them. “Yeah, Smitty’s calling the police. We have maybe twenty minutes.”

Keiji ran his fingers through his hair. “Fantastic. And they’ll show up, arrest these assholes, and then arrest us. Great.”

“No,” Chase said slowly. “We can be gone by then.”

They both glanced at Kingsford. He’d put his coffee cup down and was sighing gently. “Jesus. Alright. But we’re stopping in at the first place we can for an overhaul, alright?”

They strapped themselves into the flight deck chairs, and Kingsford took an uneasy seat at the nose. He began flicking switches on the panels, booting up the computers, running air-traffic scans and warming up the engines. A shudder ran through the long-dormant deckplates as the engines came online, and whined with a slow but quickening rotation.

“You really think this thing will fly?” Cuong sneered.

“Engines showing 94% capacity,” Kingsford reported. “Air traffic route requested over the Amazonis Sea. Launch trajectory fully plotted.”

Keiji peered out the windows. With the engines whirring at full speed, kicking up dust and long-dormant pine needles, Cuong’s men had re-evaluated their opinion of the ship. Some had piled back into the cars, others were fleeing on foot. Either they were worried they might be caught in the take-off burn, or they thought the ship might actually explode. Keiji wasn’t entirely sure it wouldn’t. His stomach was wracked with nausea.

“All systems nominal,” Kingsford said. “Awaiting clearance for take-off.” For a moment Keiji thought he was on the wire to ATC, before realising the pilot was talking to him. Awaiting captain’s orders.

“Go,” he said, and felt a sudden shifting sadness and elation as the Black Swan strained to lift free of the earth; as she rose into the air, the camp chairs and grey ashes blown away in the downdraft; as she rotated and shifted her nose to the northeast; as the boneyard gave way beneath them, those ranked rows of derelict spacecraft looking so prim and proper; as they passed over the barbed wire fence and the pine forest and the sand dunes and the blue and violet reefs; as the ship lifted away, as the ground and sea disappeared, the flight deck filled with the bright light of the rising sun.

They rose higher and higher, the engines giving off a muted roar, the distant waves of the Boreal Ocean below them like ripples in a sheet of tinfoil. Keiji caught a glimpse of whaling fleets and floating towns, feeling the sudden nostalgic regret of the only world he’d ever known. Chase, on the starboard windows, saw the distant world-breaking summit of Olympus Mons, and felt an overwhelming sense of relief, as though he had been reprieved of an awful fate he hadn’t even known had existed. Kingsford, staring directly ahead into a map of trajectories and curves and statistical readings laid out on the flight panel, could only marvel at how suddenly his life had changed.

Blue faded to black, as the Black Swan rose above the sky and carried her crew into space.