Free Death of a Starship by Jay Lake Page B

are you doing? I’m
getting screamed at from several unexpected directions, my little
ship type collector. I can’t even get a decent trace on this comm
number yet. I don’t know if you appreciate how truly annoying that
is for someone in my position.”
    “ So it’s not your goons knocking
down my door?” Albrecht asked, surprised.
    “ Micah Albrecht,
I don’t even know where your door is .”
    “ Hmm.” Was there harm in telling
her? “Might want to get a rapid response team down to The Newt
Trap. It’s a waterman’s bar down along the Sixth Wharf.”
    “ I know the place.” She glanced
away, catching the eye of someone out of his view and nodding.
Then: “You’re not there, are you?”
    “ Close by. Let’s just say bad
people knocked over The Newt Trap a few minutes ago looking for
me.”
    “ Black Flag,” she muttered, then
looked away from the pickup again and shook her head before
returning her attention to Albrecht. “What about you?”
    Black
Flag , he thought. Of course . No wonder the fat man had
been worried. Vicious anarchists, one and all, with deep pockets.
Albrecht had never understood what they wanted. It might explain
how this boat had wound up under a building. Their kind of move,
slick and clever and undetectable. But the cop had asked him a
question. “It seems I’ve accidentally landed in the middle of your
insurance fraud problem. Despite not being...um...what was the
term? An interstellar shipping magnate?”
    She looked interested in spite of
herself. “Do you plan to survive the experience?”
    The echoing bangs intensified.
Serious machine tools it was, perhaps. “We’ll both know in about
fifteen minutes. In the meantime, if the fat man tells you to duck
and cover, I’d listen very carefully.”
    “ Listen...” She closed her eyes
and sighed, then shot him a hard glare. “I’m Public Safety
Lieutenant Alma Gorova. You live long enough to tell more of the
story, you call and ask for me. I’ll listen.”
    “ You’re about to know a lot more
than you realize,” Albrecht said. “That’s a prediction, not a
promise, but I’m standing behind it with my life.”
    “ Good luck, Micah Albrecht. Don’t
do anything I’ll have to kill you for later.”
    “ My fondest wish,
ma’am.”
    When she signed off, Albrecht
amused himself by arming the antipersonnel defenses around the main
hatch. About fifteen seconds later, the banging on the hull
stopped.
    He had thirteen minutes to go. That
time went by without further terrible ado, and with a relieving
absence of additional distressing comm links. Albrecht kept a close
eye on the hot-start protocols and on the upward and downward jumps
in systems readiness. All he had to do was make orbit. Then he
could effect repairs if need be. He tried not to think about
hunter-seekers running him down. Surely the Halfsummer system had
never bothered to arm to that degree?
    When the hot-start was ready,
Albrecht put it on ten-second hold, then shifted to the engineering
panel. He looked at the anonymous, jerry-rigged control again, then
initiated its sequence.
    The damned thing didn’t even
have a password. It just kicked off a wailing alarm as something
began to boom loudly outside his hull. He lit up all the screens
and watched Pearl ’s structural integrity very carefully.
    Much to Albrecht’s amazement, hull
sensors showed outside pressure and temperature changing. He
toggled through various external camera views until he found
something visible.
    Water was rushing in around the
hull. He could feel the deck rocking slightly.
    That wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t
immediately disastrous. More to the point, why? He studied the
screen. All he could see was shadowed water and foaming mud.
Something fairly large surged in and clunked against the
hull.
    Wood.
    “ Oh, crap,”
Albrecht whispered. He called up the nöosphere window and searched
for a map of the Sixth Wharf. Zoning
overlays , he thought.
    Light bloomed on the