Darkship Thieves Read online

  I had a moment of doubt, because one doesn't normally feel queasy in dreams, and then stopped thinking about it because the claw shoved me neatly through a membrane, then another—an airlock?—and into a vast, dark space.

  How vast it was, I couldn't tell, because it was dark. Though not dark as outside. More a twilight type of darkness, a veiled light—like a late summer sunset over the Mediterranean.

  My lifepod was set down, with a resounding metallic thud, and then the claw withdrew. I counted to five. Then to five again. Everything in me wanted to move. I wanted to open the door. I wanted to take off running. I did not want to sit here, waiting, confined—my legs bent backward and fast growing numb.

  But what if there was no air out there? Nonsense. Nonsense. Why would there be an airlock if no air? But what if it was ammonia? Or something like that?

  No. If he—whoever he was, Mule or darkship thief, or whatever—was anything human derived, he breathed air.

  I'd just made up my mind, and set my hand on the release bar for the lock that would allow the upper part of the lifepod to open, when there was a thud from somewhere near the nose of the lifepod. A thud like . . . like a giant door sliding open. Someone was coming. Something was coming. For me.

  I'd be damned if I was going to meet it while cramped and bent in here. I pushed down the door-opening release very fast, then pushed the lifepod open, in one move, while holding my slip—what remained of it—closed with my other hand.

  And found myself facing someone who looked utterly alien. Oh, not alien like with tentacles and stuff like the bad mid-twenty-first-century sensies. I mean, those were not really scary. What's so scary about a squid or an octopus? Even if it's walking on land?

  No. This . . . creature was scary because he was human, undeniably and certainly of the same human stock I was—bipedal, general body shape of human male. Truth be told, wonderful body shape of human male. He was tall, with broad, straight shoulders, a narrow waist, the muscular legs of a dancer or runner. All of which were clearly visible because he was wearing what could have been a dancer's costume—bright red and made of some material that molded to every inch and possibly every pore.

  I noticed that first, but then I looked up. And above the neck . . . Oh, don't misunderstand me. He didn't look deformed. Just familiar and different in an unbearable combination. His face was that of a human male, in bone and skin—a broad face, with a hint of the Nordic and a square chin, that would not have looked out of place on a redhead.

  Only the hair above the face was not red. It was . . . calico, like a cat's. A mixture of blond and brown and red, bright enough to be visible in this dim light. And his eyes, broad and bright, had no sclera at all. They were green like a cat's and, like a cat's, slanted and shining in the dark.

  "Cat got your tongue?" he asked, and seemed to see this as the epitome of humor.

  I must have made an inarticulate sound, not so much of fear as of shock. And I let the front of my gown drop open. His eyes widened, just a little, and he did the quick once-over, up-and-down checking movement. So, strange he might be. But human he was. And male.

  "Where am I?" I asked. "Who are you?"

  "What? Are you mentally defective as well as an Earthworm?" he asked. "You set out to catch a darkship thief, and you're surprised you caught him?"

  "I'm not . . ." I said. "I didn't . . ." Never had I found it so difficult to express myself in the right words. And then I realized what I'd first missed in the low light. In his hand, he had a weapon which he pointed at me.

  It wasn't like any weapon I'd ever seen—narrow and bright yellow and thin at the tip, it looked like . . . a pointer of some sort. But I had no doubt from the way he was holding it that he was armed and from the way he was looking at me that he was dangerous.

  I grabbed my ruined slip and held it one-handed, calculating how fast I could move to kick that weapon out of his hands, before he could—

  "Don't think about it, Earthworm," he said and smiled. Even teeth, but not a pleasant smile. "I don't have the time to play with you. I'm mid harvest, and I can only leave the ship on autopilot so long. So, I'm going to put you somewhere where you can't trouble me." He stepped out of the way and let me see, past him, an open door leading into what looked like some sort of corridor. "Go. Forward. Past me."

  There are only two things anyone can do in that situation: Obey or not obey. I chose the third. As I was walking past him, I turned and attacked him aiming a high kick at the gun and getting ready to fall again, entrechat, and kick his groin on the way down.

  It should have worked. It always worked. But his hand met my foot, held it. Sending me spilling backward, my head hitting the floor, hard. Dazed I looked up, to catch again that brief look of appreciation at what my split-up slip revealed.

  Oh, yes, he was male. And human. Very. But the expression of interest passed as soon as he'd shown it, his—warm, viselike—hand let go of my foot, and he seemed to jump back. Or rather, he seemed to fade out and appear further back. Quickly. "Up," he said. "Up. Don't try that again. Next time I'll fire. I swear I will. Up."

  He looked discomposed, which was odd, because he'd stopped my kick just in time. Why did he look like he'd suffered an unexpected blow? What was he afraid of?

  Whatever it was, it wasn't my fast moves. And I wasn't stupid. If at first you fail, you don't try and try again in the same manner. You fall back and think of a better way to succeed. So I walked past him—as dignified and composed as I could be—into a narrow corridor, where the walls appeared to be made of some hard, poured material, ceramite or perhaps dimatough, in an iridescent, pearly grey. At least that's what I thought the color was; it was hard to tell in the almost-darkness.

  As I walked on, ahead of him, I smelled the vague, rancid smell of long-distance ships. Not as bad as in the Circum harvesters, but worse than in Father's cruiser. Not too bad, though. Not nearly as bad as that lifepod, with my sweaty self in a far-too-small space.

  The floor under my feet felt carpeted. Plush carpets. Living quarters? He walked me round and round. Ramp. We were taking our way up somewhere. Didn't he have stairs or antigrav wells? Of course he must. Somewhere. But only an idiot would take a prisoner up stairs or antigrav wells and give the prisoner the advantage of high ground. Instead, we were following a spiral corridor along the outside of the ship, climbing up and up. Till he said, from behind me. "Left, sharp. Don't try anything funny."

  I didn't feel even vaguely humorous. I remembered that move downstairs. He was faster than I. I'd never met anyone faster than I. And I didn't want to die. I'd gotten lucky he had grabbed me with his free hand, instead of blasting me with his burner.

  "Is that gun a burner?" I asked.

  "No," he said. "It's just a flashlight. What do you think?"

  I swallowed. "I rarely think about—" I said.

  "Noted," he said. "Only an idiot would take a ship like that thing back there through the powertrees. I've half a mind to space you and save you the trouble of committing suicide going back in that."

  "Going back—" I said blankly.

  "When I'm done collecting and not a minute sooner," he said.

  We were following another corridor, and it opened onto a large, circular space. I had to blink to realize it was a bedroom. It wasn't just the darkness, but it seemed so odd to find an utterly human bedroom—bed, chair, closet doors on the wall, a sensi cabinet, a gem storage unit—in this creature's lair.

  He grabbed me. For the space of exhaling, I saw images of women captured by space monsters of . . . But he threw me down on the chair. The hard, straight-backed chair. Then he moved again with unreal speed. Tying me to the chair.

  There are very few things I truly can't stand to have done to me. Being tied up is one of them. As he tied me with something elastic and fabriclike at middle, legs and chest, I panicked and tried to struggle. But he was fast, and I hadn't a chance.

  When he finished tying me, he pocketed his gun and grinned at me in the dark. "I'll let you
go once I'm done harvesting," he said. "I really can't afford to be on autopilot anymore. We could blow at any second." He got a strip of fabric from his closet. "Just an extra precaution."

  "No," I said. "Do not blindfold me."

  "Why?" he said. "Because it will make it harder for you to get free? Good."

  And then he seemed to speed up again. Before I could do anything, I was blindfolded. And tied. To a chair.

  Right. He was going to die. He was going to die a slow and excruciatingly painful death.

  Five

  My captor didn't know how to tie up women. I wasn't sure what that meant precisely, but right then I was grateful for his ineptitude.

  His first mistake was in tying my hands in front of me. I suspect he thought he was perfectly safe, because he had tied my hands together and then tied me to the chair with my hands bound, so that two strips of what felt like fabric ran over my secured-together arms, one at chest height and one at waist level. Another strip of fabric tied my ankles together.

  The second mistake, of course, was that chest-height thing. Either the man hadn't been around many females, or he simply didn't think. Then again, didn't they say the Mules had no females? All male, all sterile with human females. Yes. That had to be it. He had no idea of the . . . ah . . . springiness of the female breast.

  I'd held my breath as he tied that bind across my chest, so it was already loose. Deep breathing and cautious wiggling made it fall past the fullest part of my breast to hang loosely around my waist. This left me free to shrug, and pull, and shrug again, till I freed my hands from the tie, now looser, around my waist. And this allowed me to bring my hands up to my mouth and gnaw through the fabric—whatever it was, it felt like fine silk against my teeth and lips—that held them.

  Silk tears easily, once it's started to tear, and once I had the first hole in, I pulled my hands apart, till at last it tore across, with a ripping sound. The fabric fell loose, and I massaged my wrists, then removed my blindfold and untied the two binds at my waist and chest, and bent to untie the one at my ankles.

  That last one felt elastic and beaded. Having untied it completely, I brought it up near my face to see it in the dim light. It was red fabric embroidered in every possible color of the rainbow. It was either a belt or a headband, and in either case it meant the cat-critter had atrocious taste. However . . . I tested the tensile strength of the thing and it would make an ideal garotte. I tied it around my slip, to hold the halves together, as I got up to investigate my surroundings.

  I really didn't want to waste more time than I needed to, but I had learned through going off on half setting more than once that it paid to reconnoiter and to know what I was up against. Particularly—I thought as I stretched—since I had no idea at all if the creature was human. Or quasi human. Or . . . a Mule. It was said, and it fell in the realm of legend more than anything else, that when the Mules escaped Earth in the spaceship they'd secretly built, they'd taken with them the most grossly bioengineered of their servants.

  Perhaps it was true, though enough had stayed behind to be chased down all over the Earth, hanged and burned and—for those that fell to exceptionally creative mobs—crucified publicly all over the globe. The vids of the time were not supposed to be accessible unless there was need to know, but I'd defeated the security in my education computer and seen them all. And hadn't been able to forget them since. And there had been people left behind to be killed who could only vaguely be called human, such were their bio-modifications. So if the Mules had taken their more bioed servants with them, exactly what were we talking about?

  If I didn't know what this . . . person/male/creature was, then I'd worry about things that might not be within his capabilities. So far, I knew he was human-shaped, save for eyes. His hair could be some odd fashion. Humans had been dyeing hair presumably since they'd had hair, and I'd seen weirder affectations in the stranger parts of Syracuse Seacity. But those eyes seemed real, and he could see very well in the dark, which probably meant they weren't contact lenses or some other purely cosmetic artifice. I also knew he could move fast. Faster than I in my speed-demon mode. Oh, and I knew he liked the sight of naked female. Which was just as well. But if I was going up against him, and if I was going to convince him to take me to Earth, I needed more.

  I walked slowly around the room, in the half light. It was roughly hexagonal and sparsely furnished. Near the closet, I found a slide that looked like the old light-adjustment slides, not in use in modern houses on Earth for two centuries, but still present in historical buildings. I slid it upward slowly, and light came flooding into the room, revealing it just as I described, save for the colors. The colors made me question the sanity, or at least the balance of the creature who had chosen them.

  Walls the deep red of arterial blood fought for notice with a bedspread the purple of a bruise. No piece of furniture was safe. The sensi cabinet, which, on Earth, came only in black and white, here rejoiced in a deep, dark, shining gold. The bedside cabinet, following the rule of no two things sharing a color, was bright, almost fluorescent green.

  I was tempted to turn the light down again, but I didn't. Instead, I walked up to that closet on the wall and opened the door. The clothes inside . . . Well, they would make an aesthete weep. Or perhaps curl in fetal position in a dark corner, whimpering in horror. There was purple and gold, silver and bright sky blue, sick green and piss yellow—sometimes all in one garment.

  Repressing a desire to vomit, I looked closer. Tunic and pants and pants and tunic. Fairly boring clothing, except for the colors. Either wherever this person came from was far more regimented than Earth, or he was the type of male who favored simplicity over fashion. Although if that was the case, someone should clue him in on colors.

  One suit stood apart from the others, having more elaborate tailoring. Instead of a tunic, it had a jacket, and the pants were tailored, rather than elastic to mold on the body. Dark red, with white piping at sleeves and pant legs, it had the feel of a uniform. Adding to this, the chest showed an insignia. I looked more closely at it and it was like nothing I'd ever seen. The insignia was shield-shaped, about the size of my palm. On it, embroidered, was a dark red apple, with a serpent coiled around it. Either the serpent had human dentition, or a human had taken a bite out of the apple before the serpent got there. Above the figure, a single word: "Eden." Beneath the figure, in ancient French—which Father had forced me to learn—the words Je Reviens which meant "I return."

  None of it made any sense. I knew Eden was the place humanity had started in one of the creation myths. But Father—and most other rulers of Earth—was not in the least religious. I'd learned all of it as myth and history, but I had a very foggy idea of what it meant. I knew it involved a serpent and an apple and the feeling started to grow on me that the whole thing was a joke I just couldn't get.

  I closed the closet doors and looked over the rest of the room. The bed was neatly made. So whatever the bioengineered freak was, he was neat. Good for him. Next, the bedside cabinet, which had a series of drawers. I walked around the bed to get there, and then I saw it . . .

  It was one of those holos which is only visible from a certain angle, and it must proceed from a chip mounted on the top of the cabinet itself. It showed a family group. A very odd family group. There was an older male—probably the father—with normal-issue human body and features. On his arm, and leaning slightly against him, was a female with the same eyes as my feline friend, only in dark blue. Both parents were dark-haired and solidly built. On the left stood a young woman who could have graced the halls of a Roman palace. Except her eyes, dark blue, were also catlike. A normal Earthlike male with blond hair had his arm over her shoulders. Right from the female, presumably the mother, stood another young lady, this one looking much like her dad and perfectly Earth-normal. Behind her and to the side, his face visible, but his body only partly so, stood a dark-haired gentleman with golden cat eyes. Right of this couple stood my acquaintance, in all his calico-haire
d splendor. And from his arm hung a perfectly normal Earth female, blonde and petite, one of those self-contained, perfectly groomed women who always made me feel like breaking something. Preferably something attached to them.

  Um . . . So, the critter didn't reproduce by fission. And he had a family somewhere. Were any of them here?

  Points against—he had said that he was alone and had the ship on autopilot. No, correction. He'd said he had the ship on autopilot. Didn't mean he was alone, only that Little Miss Blonde couldn't pilot. And—points for someone else being aboard—that light slide went all the way up to normal lighting, which Cat-Eyes didn't seem to enjoy or need.

  Fine, I'd go on with caution. If there were two of them onboard, it would make things harder. Not impossible, mind, not by a long shot, but harder.

  I left the room and met with a choice of going to the right, which angled down into the ramp I'd taken coming in. Or to the left, which led around in a lazy, level circle. I went left. These were definitely the living quarters. Not particularly impressive, but far bigger than in the harvesters from Circum and denoting a long-distance ship. There was a small room, with an exercise machine so complex that I couldn't imagine how to use it, followed by a slightly larger fresher with the usual appliances and a cleaner with the options for water or vibro. Down the hall from that was a kitchen with a large automated cooker, a small table—affixed solidly to the floor—and two chairs, ditto. The cabinet revealed two plates, two cups and two sets of cutlery. Perhaps Blondie was around after all.

  Further down the hall, a vibro closet for clothes, filled to almost capacity with dirty suits that no one had bothered to put in the small, efficient-looking vibro unit. The clothes smelled musty and contributed in no small measure to the smell of the ship. So . . . either the unit was broken—I lacked the time or interest to try it—or there was at least one very bad housekeeper aboard. A poke with my toe—as close as I wanted to get—seemed to indicate all the clothes were of the type and size of the clothing upstairs, and, truth be told, there seemed to be clothing only for one in the bedroom. So, then again, maybe kitten was alone.