The Charis flounders down onto the very last platform, almost taking out a gantry before fishtailing in the dirt and crashing to a stop against the buffer. Silas sags back in the pilot’s chair, hair matted with sweat.
‘That’s my girl,’ he gasps, patting the yoke.
‘Alright,’ Falco says, buckling a gun holster beneath her jacket, checking the one at her ankle. ‘Let’s get things straight. We get in, get the ship repaired, get out. We keep our heads down. We do not invite trouble.’ She shoots a meaningful look at the General.
‘It is never me,’ the General complains.
Falco grunts doubtfully. ‘Cover those tattoos, ma’am. And Low…’ She sighs, looking at my filthy, blood-stained clothes.
‘Here,’ says Silas wearily, shrugging out of his flight jacket. ‘Wear this. Then perhaps you can be the pilot. I’ve had enough of it.’ He goes back to packing his pipe with shaking fingers.
Gingerly, I slide my arms into the garment. The lining is torn and still damp from his perspiration. It’s heavy, and smells strongly of him: century smoke and sweat and old coffee. I turn the collar up to hide my wrapped throat, and for some reason, immediately feel better.
‘Good,’ Falco says. ‘Ready, Peg?’
Pegeen ties back their tangled hair. ‘Ready.’
Outside, the wharves are quiet. The only noise comes from some bit of metal squeaking in the breeze, the occasional groan of the platforms and, from somewhere, a low buzzing. The late-afternoon sun hammers down, as if the terraform here is thinner, as if even that has been pared to the barest minimum by the Accord, above these people who will not pay their land tax. Between the rising wind it’s eerily still. Nothing lives this far out. The air is too thin for vultures to venture far from the larger settlements that are their food source. Even the snakes that escape the ranches don’t survive long, with nothing but the dust and howling wind to sustain them.
‘No guards?’ I whisper to Pegeen, as we clang along the walkway.
Peg’s grey eyes scan ahead to where the ugly freighters squat, like great eyeless toads. ‘Ships got their own. Everyone for theirselves, out here.’
At the end of the walkway sit two low metal buildings with a gate between them. A sign reads:
U TOMS O ICE
‘They took the Fs,’ a voice says. A man sits in the wink of shade beneath the roof of the second building. His face has sunk in on itself, beetle-like eyes watering in the breeze. He wipes at them with a filthy rag, before going back to fixing something on his lap.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Said they took the Fs.’ The man winds a screw into place with agonising slowness. ‘Crew wanted them for their ship, the Fine Fandango. C fell off on its own. Never did comprehend what happened to the S.’
The General rolls her eyes. ‘Is there one place on this moon where people are normal?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, but the man doesn’t seem to be expecting much of a response. Instead, he puts the item he was fixing on the floor. A mechanical dog. It takes four steps, lets out a bark and falls over.
‘This the stable?’ Falco demands, peering into the building behind the man, filled with a jungle of cables and parts.
The man looks mournfully at his dog. ‘Yes.’
‘What happened to Horse, the old mechanic?’
‘I am Horse.’
Falco grimaces. ‘Alright. We just landed in that Orel.’ She jerks her thumb towards the Charis. ‘Pilot reckons the booster valves are all chawed up. You can take a look? Clean ’em out?’
‘I can take a look, clean ’em out,’ the man says, picking up his dog.
Silas starts forwards. ‘There’s no way—’ he protests, but Falco shoves him so hard that he wheezes.
‘We’re obliged,’ she says. ‘And if you mess it up, I’ll cut off your hands.’
‘Hands,’ the man agrees.
We walk away across the dirt. Behind us, I hear the whirring of the dog’s steps, another half-bark and a clatter.
Silas is furious. ‘If you think I’m going to let that crazed landgrubber loose on my baby—’
‘He’ll do the job.’ Falco’s face is set. ‘He used to be the best mechanic from here to Prodor.’
‘So what happened to him?’ I ask, glancing back.
‘What do you think? Factus happened.’
We make our way towards what passes for a town, here in the U Zone. The air is so heavy and sullen a bullet could have sunk and crawled along the ground.
Buildings flank a rough dirt road. They look like most on Factus, built from century wood and old freight containers, sand blown in drifts against the walls. A series of them welded together announces itself to be the General Store. The doors are closed, a faded sign in the rough plastic window states: WITCHETTY GRUBS: FOUR FOR THREE. Beneath it, fat, pale grubs pulse their bodies over a piece of rotting wood in a tank.
The road ends in a larger building – the only two-storey affair in the settlement – made of breeze blocks painted weather-beaten blue.
‘What is this place?’ I ask.
‘Clearing port, from what I’ve heard,’ Silas murmurs. ‘Freighter crews stop here and get their planetfall stamp before going on to the depot in Otroville or the townships.’
‘Why not straight there?’ the General asks. ‘The Accord have their own clearing houses.’
‘The Accord tend to take issue with discrepancies on the manifests. But if the haulers come to Pec Esterházy for approval…’ Pegeen shrugs.
‘Banditry,’ the General sneers. ‘It’s what keeps these goddam moons so backward.’
‘It’s what keeps these goddam moons from rotting altogether, little miss.’ Falco narrows her eye at the General. ‘Or do you think folk get by on what scraps the Accord bother to send?’
The General raises her chin. ‘The provisions dispatched by the Bureau to useless moons like these would be more than enough, if smugglers stopped taking their cut at every rest stop along the way.’
‘“More than enough”,’ Falco mocks. ‘You need that Academy nonsense knocking out of you. If we had time, I’d take you to an Accord-run border town
