Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

Even men could be drawn into his orbit, sucked in by a vague envy of his success with the opposite sex. Frey had never had a problem making new friends. Charm, he’d discovered, was the art of pretending you meant what you said. Whether complimenting a man, or offering feathered lies to a woman, Frey never seemed less than sincere. But he’d usually forget them the moment they were out of his sight.

Now here he was, thirty, with lines around his eyes when he smiled. He couldn’t trade on his looks for ever, and when they were gone, what was left? What would he do when his body couldn’t take the rum any more and the women didn’t want him?

He threw himself away from the sink with a snort of disgust.

Self-pity doesn’t suit you, Frey. No one likes a whiner.

Still, he had to admit, it had been a pretty bad decade and his thirties had got off to an unpromising start. Waiting for his luck to change had worn his patience thin, and trying to change it himself invariably ended in disaster.

Look on the bright side, he thought. At least you’re free.

Yes, there was that. No boss to work for, no Coalition Navy breathing down his neck. No woman tying him down. Well, not in the metaphorical sense, anyway. Some of his conquests had been more sexually adventurous than others.

But damn, this time . . . this time he really thought he had a chance. The sheer disappointment had shaken him badly.

It could have been different, though. Maybe if you’d taken a different path, ten years ago. Maybe you’d have been happy. You’d certainly have been rich.

No. No regrets. He wouldn’t waste his life on regrets.

The captain’s quarters were cramped, although they were still the biggest on the craft. He didn’t keep them particularly clean. The metal walls were coated in a faint patina of grime and the floor was filthy with bootprints. His bunk took up most of the space, beneath a string hammock of luggage which threatened to snap and bury him in the night. A desk, drawers and cabinets were affixed to the opposite wall, with catches in the drawers and doors to prevent them opening during flight. In the corner was his mirror and washbasin. Sometimes he used the washbasin as a toilet in the night, rather than climb two levels down to use the head. There were advantages to being male.

He got up and opened a drawer. Inside, atop a mess of papers and notebooks, sat a tiny bottle of clear liquid. He took it, and returned to the bunk.

Might as well, he thought, sadly.

He unscrewed the stopper, which also functioned as a pipette. He squeezed the bulb and drew in a little liquid, tipped his head back and administered one drop to each eye. Blinking, he lay back on the bed.

Drowsy relief billowed over his senses. The aches in his joints faded away, to be replaced by a warm, cloudy sensation that erased his cares and smoothed his brow. His eyes flickered shut, and he drifted on the cusp of sleep for a long while before succumbing.

He dreamed that night of a young woman, with long blonde hair and a smile so perfect it made his heart glow like burning embers. But when he woke the next morning, he remembered none of it.

Old One-Eye’s tavern was a swelter of heat and smoke, pungent with sweat and meat and beer. The gas lamps were muted by the fug that hung in the air. Stoves, lit to keep the chill of dusk away, made the room stifling. The din of conversation was such that people had to shout to be heard, raising the volume ever further. Waitresses passed between the crude wooden tables, expertly avoiding the attentions of rough-eyed men with ready hands.

Buried amid the standing crowd, Frey held court at a table littered with pewter flagons. He was just finishing a tale about his early days working for Dracken Industries as a cargo hauler. The story concerned an employee’s senile mother, who had somehow got to the controls of an unattended tractor and driven it into a pile of caged chickens. The punchline was delivered with enough panache to make Pinn spew beer from his nose, which had Malvery laughing so hard he retched. Crake observed the scene with a polite smile. Harkins looked nervously at the people standing nearby, clearly wishing he was anywhere but here. The gangly pilot had been cajoled along on this expedition by Malvery, who thought it would do him good to get out among people. Harkins hated the idea, but had agreed anyway, to avoid the slightest risk of giving offence by refusal.

Jez and Silo were absent. Jez didn’t drink alcohol, and kept herself to herself; Silo rarely left the ship.

Crake sipped at his beer as Pinn and Malvery recovered. His companions were all merrily drunk, except Harkins, who radiated discomfort despite having sunk three flagons already. Crake was still working on his first. They’d given up bullying him to keep pace once he’d convinced them he wouldn’t be swayed. He had other business tonight, and it didn’t involve getting hammered on cheap alcohol.

How easily they forgot, he thought. As if Macarde holding a gun to his head was a trifling matter not worthy of comment. As if the mass murder of dozens of innocent people was something that could be erased with a few nights of heavy drinking.

Was that their secret? Was that how they lived in this world? Like animals, thinking only of what was in front of them. Did they live in the moment, without thought for the past or concern for the future?

Certainly that was true of Pinn. He was too dim to comprehend such intangibles as past or future. Whenever he spoke of them, it was with such a devastating lack of understanding that Crake had to leave the room.

Pinn rambled endlessly about Lisinda, a girl from his village, the sweetheart who waited for him back home. His devotion and loyalty to her were eternal. She was a goddess, a virginal idol, the woman he was to marry. After a brief romance—during which Pinn proudly declared they’d never had sex, as if through some mighty restraint on his part—she’d told him she loved him. Not long afterward, he’d left her a note and gone out into the world to make his fortune. That had been four years ago, and he’d neither seen nor contacted her since. He’d return a rich and successful man, or not at all.

Pinn saw himself as her shining knight, who would one day return and give her all the wonderful things he felt she deserved. The simple truth—which, in Crake’s opinion, was obvious to anyone with half a brain—was that the day would never come. What little money Pinn had was quickly squandered on pleasures of the flesh. He gambled, drank and whored as if it was his last day alive, and he flew the same way. Even if he somehow managed to survive long enough to luck his way into a fortune, Crake had no doubt that the bovine, dull-looking girl—whose picture Pinn enthusiastically showed to all and sundry—had long since given up on him and moved on.

In Crake’s eyes, Pinn had no honour. He’d lie with whores, then lament his manly weakness in the morning and swear fidelity to Lisinda. The following night he’d get drunk and do it again. How he could believe himself in love on the one hand and cheat on her on the other was baffling. Crake considered him a life-form ranking somewhere below a garden mole and just above a shellfish.

The others, he couldn’t so easily dismiss. Harkins was a simple man, but at least he knew it. He didn’t suffer the same staggering failure of self-awareness that Pinn did. Malvery had a brain on him when he chose to use it, and he was a good-hearted sort to boot. Jez, while not luminously cultured, was very quick and knew her stuff better than anyone on board, with the possible exception of their mysterious Murthian engineer. Even Frey was smart, though clearly lacking in education.