“That’s it.” She started forward. “Someone’s in there.”

I shot her a glance. “Or something. Ripwings, right?”

“Yeah, but it takes a pretty sharp ripwing to figure out the buttons. Usually they’ll just short the system with a beakbutt and hope it lets them in. And I don’t smell anything burning.”

“Me neither.” I calibrated the gantry space, the rise of the cargo pods over us. Drew the Rapsodia and dialled it to maximum dispersal. “Okay, so let’s do this sensibly. Let me go in there first.”

“I’m supposed—”

“Yeah, I’m sure you are. But I used to do this for a living. So how about you have this one on me. Stay here, shoot anything that comes out of that hatch unless you hear me call it first.”

I moved to the hatch as carefully as I could on the unstable footing and examined the locking mechanism. There didn’t appear to be any damage.

The hatch hung outward a couple of centimetres, maybe tipped that way by the pitch of the freighter in the squall.

After whichever pirate ninja opened it had cracked the lock, that is.

Thanks for that.

I tuned out the squall and the alarm. Listened for motion on the other side, cranked the neurachem tight enough to pick up heavy breathing.

Nothing. No one there.

Or someone with stealth combat training.

Will you shut up.

I fitted one foot against the edge of the hatch and gave it a cautious shove. The hinges were balanced to a hair—the whole thing swung weightily outward. Without giving myself time to think, I twisted into the gap, Rapsodia tracking for a target.

Nothing.

Waist-high steel barrels stood in shiny ranks across the cargo space. The gaps between were too thin to hide a child, let alone a ninja. I crossed to the nearest and read the label. Finest Saffron Seas Luminescent Xenomedusal Extract, cold press filtered. Webjelly oil, designer branded for added value.

Courtesy of our entrepreneurial expert on austerity.

I laughed and felt the tension puddle back out of me.

Nothing but—

I sniffed.

There was a scent, fleeting on the metallic air in the cargo pod.

And gone.

The New Hok sleeve’s senses were just acute enough to know it was there, but with the knowledge and the conscious effort, it vanished. Out of nowhere, I had a sudden flash recollection of childhood, an uncharacteristically happy image of warmth and laughter that I couldn’t place. Whatever the smell was, it was something I knew intimately.

I stowed the Rapsodia and moved back to the hatch.

“There’s nothing in here. I’m coming out.”

I stepped back into the warm splatter of the rain and heaved the hatch closed again. It locked into place with a solid thunk of security bolts, shutting in whatever trace scent of the past I’d picked up on. The pulsing reddish radiance over my head died out and the alarm, which had settled to an unnoticed background constant, was abruptly silent.

“What were you doing in there?”

It was the entrepreneur, face tense closing on angry. He had his security in tow. A handful of crew members crowded behind. I sighed.

“Checking on your investment. All sealed and safe, don’t worry. Looks like the pod locks glitched.” I looked at the crew-woman with the blaster.

“Or maybe that extra smart ripwing showed up after all and we scared it off. Look, this is a bit of a long shot I know, but is there a sniffer set anywhere aboard?”

“Sniffer set? Like, for the police you mean?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so. You could ask the skipper.”

I nodded. “Yeah well, like I said—”

“I asked you a question.”

The tension in the entrepreneur’s features had made it all the way to anger. At his side, his security glared supportively.

“Yeah, and I answered it. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“You’re not going anywhere. Tomas.”

I cut the bodyguard a glance before he could act on the command.

He froze and shifted his feet. I shifted my eyes to the entrepreneur, fighting a strong urge to push the confrontation as far as it would go.

Since my run-in with the priest’s wife, I’d been twitchy with the need to do violence.

“If your tuskhead here touches me, he’s going to need surgery. And if you don’t get out of my way, so will you. I already told you, your cargo’s safe. Now suppose you step aside and save us both an embarrassing scene.”

He looked back at Tomas, and evidently read something instructive in his expression. He moved.

“Thank you.” I pushed my way through the gathered crew members behind her. “Anybody seen Japaridze?”

“On the bridge, probably,” said someone. “But Itsuko’s right, there’s no sniffer gear on the ‘duct. We’re not fucking seacops.”

Laughter. Someone sang the signature tune to the experia show of the same name, and the rest took it up for a couple of bars. I smiled thinly and shouldered my way past. As I left, I heard the entrepreneur demanding loudly that the hatch be opened again immediately.

Oh well.

I went to find Japaridze anyway. If nothing else, at least he could provide me with a drink.

The squall passed.

I sat on the bridge and watched it fade away eastward on the weather scanners, wishing the knot inside me would do the same. Outside, the sky brightened and the waves stopped knocking the Haiduci’s Daughter about.

Japaridze slacked off the emergency drive to the grav motors and the freighter settled back into her former stability.

“So tell me the truth, sam.” He poured me another shot of Millsport blended and settled back in the chair across the navigation table. There was no one else on the bridge. “You’re casing the webjelly consignment, right?”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Well, if I am, that’s a pretty unhealthy question to ask me.”

“Nah, not really.” He winked and knocked his drink back in one. Since it had become clear that the weather was going to leave us alone, he’d let himself get slightly drunk. “That rucking prick, for me you can have his cargo. Just so long as you don’t try and lift it while it’s on the ‘dud.”

“Right.” I raised my glass to him.

“So who is it?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Who you running radar for? The yak? Weed Expanse gangs? Thing is—”

“Ari, I’m serious.”

He blinked at me. “What?”

“Think about it. If I’m a yak research squad, you go asking questions like that, it’s going to get you Really Dead.”

“Ah, crabshit. You ain’t going to kill me.” He got up, leaned across the table towards me and peered into my face. “You don’t got the eyes for it. I can tell.”

“Really.”

“Yeah, besides.” He sank back into his seat and gestured untidily with his glass. “Who’s going to sail this tub into Newpest harbour if I’m dead. She’s not like those Saffron Line AI babies, you know. Every now and then, she needs the human touch.”

I shrugged. “I guess I could scare someone on the crew into it. Show them your smouldering corpse for an incentive.”

“That’s good thinking.” He grinned and reached for the bottle again. “I hadn’t thought of that. But like I said, I don’t see it in your eyes.”

“Met a lot like me, have you?”

He filled our glasses. “Man, I was one like you. I grew up in Newpest just like you and I was a pirate, just like you. Used to work route robberies with the Seven Per Cent Angels. Crabshit stuff, skimmer cargo coming in over the Expanse.” He paused and looked me in the eyes. “I got caught.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Yeah, it was too bad. They took the flesh off me and they dumped me in the store for three decades, near enough. When I got out, all they had to sleeve me in was some wired-for-shit methhead’s body. My family had all grown up, or moved away, or, you know, died or something. I had a daughter, seven years old when I went in, she was ten years older than the sleeve I was wearing by the time I got out. She had a life and a family of her own. Even if I had known how to relate to her, she didn’t want to know me. I was just a thirty-year gap in her eyes. Likewise her mother, who’d found some other guy, had kids, well, you know how it goes.” He sank his drink, shivered and stared at me through suddenly teared eyes. He poured himself another. “My brother died in a bug crash a couple of years after I went away, no insurance, no way to get a re-sleeve. My sister was in the store, she’d gone in ten years after me, wasn’t getting out for another twenty. There’d been another brother, born a couple of years after I went away, I didn’t know what to say to him. My father and mother were separated—he died first, got his re-sleeve policy through and went off somewhere to be young, free and single again. Wouldn’t wait for her. I went to see her but all she did was stare out of the window with this smile on her face, kept saying soon, soon, it’ll be my turn soon. Gave me the fucking creeps.”