Lance Coulson picked up his credit disk and stood up. “I see I have been wasting my time.”
“Thank you for the information,” Erick said in a loud voice.
Lance Coulson gave him a frightened look. “What?”
“That’s going to be enormously useful to us. How would you like to be paid? Cash or commodities?”
“Shut up.”
“Sit down, and stop fucking about.”
He sat, checking the rest of the tables with twitchy glances.
“We want to buy, you want to sell,” Erick said. “So let’s stop the drama queen tactics, assume you’ve shown us what a tough negotiator you are, and we’re all shitting bricks. Now what’s your price? And be realistic. There are other flight controllers.”
He overcame his agitation for just long enough to shoot Erick a look of one hundred per cent hatred. “Thirty thousand.”
“Agreed,” André Duchamp said immediately. He held out his Jovian Bank disk.
Lance Coulson gave a last furtive glance round before shoving his own disk in André’s direction.
“Merci , Lance.” André’s grin was scathing as he received the datavised flight vector.
The four crewmen watched the civil servant retreating, and laughed. Erick was congratulated for calling the other man’s bluff, Bev Lennon fetching him half a litre of of imported Lübeck beer.
“You had me panicking!” the wiry fusion specialist protested as he dropped the tankards down on their table.
Erick took a sip of the icy beer. “I had me panicking.”
It was going well, they accepted him, reservations (and he knew some still had them) were fading, breaking down. He was becoming one of the lads.
Along with Bev Lennon and Desmond Lafoe, the ship’s node specialist, a brawny two-metre-tall bear of a man, Erick spent the next ten minutes talking trivia while André Duchamp sat back with a blank expression reviewing the vector he had just bought.
“I don’t see any problem,” the captain announced eventually. “If we use a Sacramento orbit to jump from we can rendezvous any time in the next six days. Fifty-five hours from now would be the ideal . . .” His voice trailed off.
Erick turned to follow his gaze. Five men wearing copper-coloured one-piece ship-suits walked into the Catalina bar.
Hasan Rawand caught sight of André Duchamp as he was about to sit at the bar. He tapped Shane Brandes, the Dechal ’s fusion engineer, on the side of his arm and flicked a finger in the direction of the master of Villeneuve’s Revenge . His other three crew-members, Ian O’Flaherty, Harry Levine, and Stafford Charlton, caught the gesture and turned to look.
The two crews regarded each other with mutual hostility and antagonism.
Hasan Rawand walked over to the window booth table, his crew right behind him. “André,” he said with mock civility. “So nice to see you. I trust you have brought my money. Eight hundred thousand, wasn’t it? And that’s before interest. It has been seventeen months after all.”
André Duchamp gazed straight ahead, his hands cupping his beer tankard. “I owe you no money,” he said darkly.
“I think you do. Cast your mind back; you were carrying plutonium initiators from Sab Biyar to the Isolo system. Dechal waited in Sab Biyar’s Oort cloud for thirty-two hours for you, André. Thirty-two hours in stealth mode, with freezing air and iced food, pissing into tubes that leaked, not even allowed a personal MF player in case the navy ships picked up its electronic emission. That’s not nice, André; it’s about as close as you can get to a Confederation penal colony without being shot down to the surface in a drop capsule. We waited for thirty-two hours in the stinking dark for you to show so we could take the initiators in, doing your dirty work for you and carrying all the risk. And when we got back to Sab Biyar what did I find?”
André Duchamp grinned round at his own crew, trying to brazen it out. “I’m sure you’ll tell me, Anglo .”
“You went to Nuristan and sold the initiators to one of their naval contractors, you Gallic shithead ! I was left trying to explain to the Isolo Independence Front where their nukes had gone, and why their poxy rebellion was going to fail because they hadn’t got the fire-power to back up their demands.”
“You can show me the contract?” André Duchamp asked mockingly.
Hasan Rawand glared down at him, lips compressed in rage. “Just hand over the money. A million will see you clear.”
“To hell with you, Anglo filth. I, André Duchamp, owe nobody money.” He stood up and tried to barge past the Dechal ’s captain.
It was the move Erick Thakrar was waiting for and dreading. Sure enough, Hasan Rawand shoved André Duchamp back in the booth. The back of the older captain’s knee struck a seat which almost tipped him off balance. He recovered and launched himself at Hasan Rawand, fists flying.
Desmond Lafoe rose to his feet drawing a frantic gasp from Ian O’Flaherty when his size, weight, and strength became apparent. Huge hands reached forward, and Ian O’Flaherty was jerked off his feet. He kicked out wildly, toecap striking Desmond Lafoe’s shin. The giant merely grunted, and then threw his victim across the room. He landed awkwardly on one of the aluminium tables, his shoulder taking the brunt of his momentum before he crashed down backwards onto a pair of chairs.
Erick felt a hand close around the neck fabric of his ship-suit. It was Shane Brandes who was hauling him out of the booth; a forty-year-old with a bald head and small gold earrings, smiling with ugly anticipation. The unarmed combat file in Erick’s neural nanonics went into primary mode. His instinctive thought routines were superseded by logic-based patterns, calculating inertia and intent with an ease surpassing any kung fu master. Nanonic supplement boosted muscles powered up.
Shane Brandes was surprised how easy it was to pull his opponent out of the booth. Gratification became alarm when he kept on coming. Shane had to backstep to keep balance, his own neural nanonics assuming command of his mass positioning. He cocked a fist back to smash into Erick’s face, only to have a nanonic warning blare in his mind as Erick’s forearm swung up with incredible speed. His punch was blocked, arm chopped painfully to one side. A furious kick to Erick’s groin—his knee nearly fractured from the impact of the counter-kick. He reeled to one side, banging into Harry Levine and Bev Lennon, who were locked together.
Erick slammed an elbow into Shane’s ribs, hearing bone break. He let out an agonized grunt.
The unarmed combat file said that speed was essential, take out your opponent as soon as possible. His neural nanonics analysed Shane’s movements, the half twist as he clutched at his ribs, bending over. The motion was projected two seconds into the future. Interception points were computed. A list materialized in his consciousness, and he selected a blow that would cause temporary incapacitation. His right leg shot out, booted foot aiming for a patch of empty air. Shane’s head fell into it.
A threat assessment sub-routine shifted his peripheral senses into priority focus. André Duchamp and Hasan Rawand were still battering away at each other on the side of the booth’s table. Neither was inflicting much damage in the confined space.
Harry Levine had got Bev Lennon into a head lock. The two of them were on the floor, squirming round like theatrical wrestlers, sending chairs spinning. Bev Lennon sent a flurry of elbow jabs into Harry Levine’s stomach, attempting to knock his navel into his spine.
Stafford Charlton obviously had a boosted musculature. He was standing in front of Desmond Lafoe, landing blow after blow on the big man, arms moving with programmed efficiency. He had almost doubled up from the pain, his right arm hung limply, the shoulder broken. Blood ran out of his flattened nose.