Outrageous Fortune-Errant Freight Book One

Chapter 10

While Jagati charted a new course on the bridge of the Errant, Tariq El Karim ascended the gangplank of the Al-Jinn, his grounded airship.

The damage done his 'ship was but one item on the index of grievances Tariq held against the thieves, placed just below the theft of Tariq's most prized cargo and above the injuries suffered by several of his crew.

And he still had no idea what had become of his men aboard the Errant, which meant he had to take crew away from breaking down their camp or repairing the 'ship to search for the four missing men.

Stopping at the top of the gangplank to brush the patina of Dyar's Canyon from his coat, Tariq looked over the cargo bay, lit by the bulkhead sconces, noting as he did the acrid stench of crystal det and a strip of blackened metal where the bay door's lock had been.

The odor of det and broken lock were the only signs of intrusion. Otherwise, every crate, canister, and barrel was undisturbed, all secured under their flight webbing.

This surprised Tariq, as several of those crates, canisters, and barrels contained high-value goods—goods a man flying a wreck like the Errant should have found tempting.

But Pitte had left all untouched, instead using the small window of opportunity to steal one middling-sized box.

A box secreted in one out of several dozens of smuggler's hides aboard the 'ship, which meant they had to have known not only what they wanted, but where to find it.

The intimacy of their knowledge with his 'ship further inflamed the anger already burning in his gut and he gave up on the coat, instead striding into the belly of the Al-Jinn and up the companionway, moving so quickly that the remaining dust wafted around him in a violet haze, as if he were himself the spirit of air and fire for which the airship had been named.

He didn't stop until he reached the entrance to the starboard pod on the third deck, where he looked inside to see the Al-Jinn's mechanic already head and shoulders deep into the engine's guts.

"How bad is it?" he asked.

"Not as bad as it could be," Jacques O'Malley said, sliding out from the open casing. His expression, what little was visible above the ruddy beard, was perplexed. "Kinda surprising, considering anyone with the smarts to break into the pod's guts like they did could'a done a lot worse, but they just disconnected the overhead coupling." He pointed to the part in question with one hairy paw. "And pulled out the secondary and tertiary buffers, but—and this is what's so swarm about it—they left both tubes standing outside the pod, nice as you please, so's we'd see what they did."

"Very polite of them," Tariq murmured.

"I'll say," Jacques agreed, immune as ever to his leader's sarcasm. "Be easy enough to hide the buffers, or destroy the lot and let us try to power up and, well, that'd be the end of the line for the Al-Jinn here," he said, patting the crystal-drive's casing with affection.

Tariq considered that. "Are you saying you believe they wished us no harm?"

"Well, nothing permanent, I'd say. Just wanted us grounded long enough to make their getaway."

"Which, as it stands, seems to have worked."

"As my old gran used to say, some days you're the dire wolf, some days you're the dodo," Jacques said, giving his beard a scratch.

"A point of view," Tariq said after a beat. He never could say if Jacques's easy humor was endemic to the entire population of the Moosehead Territories, or unique to O'Malley alone, but it never ceased to intrigue him. In the earliest days of their association, he had even wondered if the red-haired giant possessed the slightest notion he was part of an outlaw organization, until the day the member of a rival crew attempted to get between Jacques and a biscuit tin from Earth, circa 2240.