Darkship Thieves Read online

  Grabbing the boot, I jumped off the lifepod and crept into the deeper shadows starting to round the harvester.

  There was a movement in the shadows. Or so I thought. But it might have been just a reflection on the carapace of the harvester. I waited. Nothing moved. So I started forward again.

  And then, suddenly—I struck out, before I realized what I was striking out at. Crashing into something hard shocked me so much I almost dropped the boot. Lightning fast, between the first strike and pulling back to hit again, I recognized the square chin and brutal straight lips of Lars Einar, yet another of Father's goons. The second time, I hit out with a sense of relief, because when I'd first reacted, I wasn't absolutely sure I wasn't merely attacking some poor harvester doing a last inspection of his ship.

  I heard a rustle behind me, and pirouetted, foot raised, to kick another of the goons square on the balls, and take him out with a smack of silver heel to the temple.

  I wondered why they weren't wearing dimatough—but of course, that would look weird on Circum when supposedly all they were doing was recapturing a Patrician's daughter. Without thinking, I hit with the heel again, to my left. I wasn't aware of having heard anything. Or seen anything. But I was aware of having hit human flesh and bone. And a soft sigh indicated someone who had gone off to a happy goodnight.

  I had entered my speeded-up state. I spoke to the shadows, "You can't get me. I don't care how many of you there are, you can't get me. Just let me go in and leave me alone."

  There was no answer, though my heightened senses could feel a dozen expectant presences, composed of little more than a stray breath, an odd rustle within the shadows. "Come on, come out of hiding. I'll take you all together or one by one. Come on, you piss bastards!"

  "Athena."

  It was the voice I last expected to hear. I turned, startled. In the shadows there was—

  "Father," I said, at the same time I identified him. He looked like hell, pale and trembling, holding on with both hands to a cane—something he hadn't used in a very long time and only when he was feeling ill. His face looked more wrinkled, too, like crinkled parchment.

  Above it, his merciless dark blue eyes, the exact color of mine, shone at me. "There is no need for all this, Athena."

  Was he really here? Was it a hologram?

  I took a step towards him, trying to see more clearly.

  It caused me to miss the rustle to my right side. I struck out with the heel, but not in time. Something cold was already touching my neck.

  As the whole world seemed to recede from my sight, I saw something fall and roll at my feet. A piss-yellow injector. Morpheus. Oh, shit.

  The world went black.

  Ten

  Artificial grav, I'm going to throw up. The thought assembled in my mind, bit by bit, as if I were thinking with instruments totally unsuited for the task. My toes. Or perhaps my stomach. Which was clenching and . . .

  Easy, a thought formed in my mind, and it was easy, as if it had come from outside my head. Easy there. It's Morpheus reaction.

  Hands, firm but gentle, helped me turn and something must have been proffered to catch the contents of my stomach, because there was no hint of dismay as burning bile came shooting out of my mouth. Just, Easy, you'll be all right.

  Don't be foolish, I told myself. There was no Morpheus. I took Andrija Baldo down. I escaped in the lifepod. No Morpheus.

  As you say, Madame Patrician, This time the voice had a tinge of almost sad amusement. Like the emotion evoked watching the vain efforts of a child to do something she's not capable of. And in my mind, slowly, another scene involving Morpheus assembled—a landing bay and—Father!

  There were no words in answer, this time. Something clanked nearby, sounding like a space cruiser's disposal chute leading to recycling facilities. Something soft wiped at my mouth. A hand touched my hair, pulling the curls back. For a moment, in total confusion, I thought it was my mother. My mother was the only person who did that as I lay down. Mother.

  My answer was a soft chuckle that sounded not at all feminine. I went into the darkness again.

  I woke up in space. My first thought was that I was in Circum, that I'd somehow hallucinated the ambush and Father and the Morpheus and all that. But the artificial gravity of Circum Terra was almost like real gravity and didn't bother me. But then again, this didn't feel like the artificial gravity in Father's cruiser. This was a completely different quality of feeling, something that made me feel lightheaded, but not exactly nauseous.

  Also, the bed beneath me did not feel like my bed in Daddy Dearest's cruiser. It was firmer, and somehow cooler. A hand flung sideways felt a handful of silk, not the dimatough bed frame.

  My head hurt like all the blazes, a rhythmic headache, concentrated on the top of my eyes, flashing, flaring, making me wish to whine with pain—only I had learned long ago not to whine. If you cry, if you give a sign of frailty, they pounce. It doesn't matter who they are. They are always there waiting to pounce. At the last instance, there was always Father, waiting for a weakness, ready to subdue me. I'd learned early and I'd learned well not to whimper, not to simper and not to cry. Unless of course it was to make someone think I was weak, just before I pounded them.

  I forced my eyelids open against all my preservation instincts, making my eyes open, making . . .

  There was no light. Or at least not the light I was fearing, the light I was sure would make my headache pound and make me throw up again. Instead, there was a soothing twilight, full of shadows. Shadows.

  I started to sit up, and the round bed—like something from Decadent Earth—the cabinets, the straight-backed chair, all found a home in my memory. The darkship.

  How and when had I come back here? Had he kidnapped me? Did he . . . ?

  A memory of being ambushed, of Father or perhaps a hologram of Father being used to surprise me, to stop me long enough, made me flinch. If it wasn't Father, then his bodyguards had been set to capture me. And if it was Father . . . I didn't want to think about it. I couldn't think.

  The door opened and closed softly, and there by it stood the strange ELF, staring at me. "Would you like light?" he asked politely, like someone asking you if you wanted water, or perhaps food.

  "A . . . little," I said. "But not if . . . not if it's going to blind you."

  He slid his hand up the light switch. By the faint glow suffusing the room, I could see him smile, a tight smile, like he needed all his self-control to deal with me. The catlike eyes were attentive. "It won't blind me," he said. "I have my lenses in." And then, to what must have been a look of incomprehension on my face, "I wear them when I'm not alone, and when I'm not harvesting. Most cats do. We can't ask our families to live in the dark, after all." The tight smile flashed again. "I am told it makes our vision almost normal, but that we don't see colors quite the way the rest of you do."

  "Oh." And I supposed that was an explanation to the glaring colors everywhere, but I wasn't about to ask. "Where . . . We're not in the powertree ring."

  "No."

  "Earth orbit?" I asked hopefully.

  He actually cackled. A short, dry cackle. "No."

  "I . . . what are you . . . Where are you taking me?"

  There was a hesitation. The generous lips tightened, and a wrinkle formed on his forehead. It made him, somehow, look more human. Also upset. "I only have one place to take you. Home with me."

  The unsaid words but I don't have to like it hung in the air between us. I didn't ask for it to be made explicit. He didn't try to tell me, either. Just looked at me with the expression of someone who is not quite sure how to avoid the wall his broom is heading towards.

  "How long will it take us to get there?" I said. I felt oddly vulnerable. I was locked in this ship with a person who had no reason to like me. I assumed it was better than being in Circum Terra, or perhaps back in Daddy's ship, with whatever the goons wanted to do to me. I had a strong feeling if they'd gotten their way, I'd no longer be consuming oxygen.
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  He shook his head and didn't say anything, and I realized he thought I was trying to get information about the darkship's base. Which I was. Of course I was, but not as a spy. If I was going to this place, it seemed logical that I ask where it was, what it was and . . .

  "It's not that I don't want to answer," he said. "Though I would like to say, even if the setup I rescued you from was elaborate, it wasn't impossible. It's quite likely that the people of Earth, wanting at long last to trace us, would have set up just this elaborate trap with tasty bait for the one cat without a nav, the one cat who travels alone, the outcast one. It would make me think more highly of Earthwo—of your people's policing efforts, but it would not be impossible."

  He raised his eyebrows at me, as if thinking through the implications of such an unlikely trap. "But in that case, I suspect they would have put a tracer on you, rather than get you to ask me where my home was.

  "My equipment could not detect a bug, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. Just that the bug is well hidden, or perhaps of a type I can't detect. Of course, if that's the case, whether I tell you or not is largely inconsequential. But the thing is that I truly don't know. Our . . . home is on a variable orbit. I have alarms and detectors and an idea of in which direction to head. We'll reach it when we reach it."

  His reasoning was almost as paranoid as mine when faced with Father's plans, or Father's when faced with the universe at large. And the variable orbit made sense. I had a vague idea that when the Mules had first left, while the space travel capacity they had endowed Earth with still endured, and before the last spasms of the riots had destroyed it, they had swept the Solar System for a trace of the Mules.

  Of course, these couldn't be the Mules. Not as such. The Mules had no women, and my captor had Blondie and the family group which either had women or some spectacularly odd-looking males. Not that this would be unlikely. One heard stories even from Circum Terra, where females were scarce. Year after year, much less century after century, with few or no women led to creative arrangements and given bioengineering . . . "How old are you?"

  His eyes widened. Whatever he'd been expecting, that question wasn't it. "Twenty-two," he said, in the bewildered tone of someone who can't be bothered making up a lie.

  Oh. So no Mules, because unless they reckoned years differently—"Years?"

  He grinned this time. A genuinely amused grin. "Millennia. What do you think?"

  "I don't know," I said, slowly. It hadn't mattered. Not so much. Not while I thought we were going to part ways and never see each other again. But thoughts of the things the Mules were alleged to have done, the people they were said to have killed—hundreds of people, thousands, millions, for reasons that only the Mules could understand. And the things that had been done to the Earth under their watch. All of it made my hair stand on end at the thought of being in this ship with one of them for who knew how long. What would he think of me? What would he care for a mere human? "Are you a Mule?"

  The smile vanished, the mouth tightened. The odd-looking eyes—which were becoming readable the more I looked at him—turned guarded. "What do you care? Does prejudice against bioing still hold on Earth?"

  "No," I said, because prejudice is a charged word. At any rate, I was truthful. There was no prejudice as such. Bioing was a death-bringing crime. For those perpetrating it and the results. "But I want to know."

  He shrugged. "I'm twenty-two Earth years old. Does that answer your question, or do you need my universal birth date, too?"

  No reason to get rude, but I wasn't going to argue. I just nodded. It answered my question well enough. If he was twenty-two, he could not have been alive when the Mules left the Earth and therefore he could not possibly be one of them.

  "I've set the cooker to prepare some food," he said. "Since you didn't seem to have eaten in quite a while."

  Quite a while. Depending on how long I'd been asleep it could be almost twenty-four hours. At any rate, I'd never heard of Morpheus knocking anyone out for less than twelve hours.

  I got up, and found myself swaying on my feet, not so much dizzy as unsure of my footing. It was like when Father had taken me on a cruise in the Mediterranean, years ago. The ship had been large enough that the floor felt as if it were stationary. But I hadn't felt it as stationary, rather as bobbing and bouncing.

  Now there was the same unsteadiness to the ground under me, that my back brain knew about, even though my feet couldn't quite feel it.

  "Easy," my captor said, sounding much like that voice in my head. "We're under way. It's a different drive, and for someone whose brain is sensitive enough to feel artificial gravity, it would be disorienting." He extended a hand towards me, as though to help me.

  "You're making fun of me," I said, almost wailing in fury and waving way his hand.

  His eyes widened again. "What? No. You're clearly sensitive to artificial gravity. A lot of navigators are. It comes with the built-in sense of direction."

  "Oh." I gave him a close look, to make sure it wasn't some joke I just didn't get. But he wasn't laughing. He was extending his hand, still. "Come on. You'll be unsteady until you get your space legs."

  I allowed him to grasp my wrist. If this was a seduction ploy, he really wasn't very good at it. Like his inability to tie up women properly, it was oddly reassuring. Actually, he didn't even hold my wrist. just clasped it when it looked like I was about to fall, and the rest of the time let me try to progress on my own. I remembered the way, sort of. I'd come through here, trying to figure out what sort of creature held me captive. Now I looked at him and found him looking at me.

  "You wouldn't be feeling the need to garrotte me, would you?" he asked.

  The question was half coy and half teasing, and my first reaction was that I would, of course, not tell him if I had any such intention. But the next reaction was to think it through. Could I attack him, turn the ship around, get to Earth?

  Perhaps. No. Almost certainly. The ship was not that difficult, I thought. Well, all right. There were all the implements for collections and all the various navigation systems, and I'm sure they took some learning. But I also had no doubt I could learn them. The system had yet to be created that I couldn't back-engineer and figure out. On the other hand, I remembered the gauges in the control room. There was no way—absolutely no way—that I could learn it on the fly, without weeks of practice. And there were other considerations. Such as the fact that, if I took this ship to Earth, Earth defense systems in whatever continent I landed in were likely to think I was an enemy and shoot before asking questions.

  But beyond all that, I couldn't be so crass as to hit my captor on the head and then head off.

  But why had he come and gotten me? Obviously the mind link had sent him feelings of my surprise. He knew I'd been hit with Morpheus. And doubtless he'd come in the nick of time. I had no idea what Daddy's goons intended to do to me, but I was fairly sure it wasn't pleasant. But why had he come? He hadn't told me.

  And, I realized as we entered the kitchen and he gestured for me to sit at the table, he wasn't about to tell me. Instead, he fiddled with the cooker, peering in screens and making half mutters as one absorbed in a task.

  After a while, he set a cup of broth in front of me. It tasted odd. Very odd. It was like . . . chicken broth, with an odd hint of fish. "Fish?" I asked.

  He looked surprised. "Most of the protein in Ed—at home is fish. Not much space for cows." He smiled as he got himself a bowl of the broth, then handed me a spoon and took one for himself from some receptacle beside the cooker. "If you don't like it, I can program other flavors."

  But the broth, strange flavor and all, calmed my hunger pangs, as did a sort of flat bread filled with what appeared to be a nut paste. He ate also while staring at me. When I was almost done, he said, "I have moved my clothes to one of the storage rooms," he said quietly. "You may have my room."

  Well, I thought, that figured. It was probably the most secure place in the ship. I wouldn't put it past hi
m to have put some sort of alarm on the door too. "And where will you sleep?" I asked, wondering if, after all, this was some form of backwards seduction—if he intended to share the bed with me.

  He shrugged. "Probably the virtus. It's where I sleep most nights." He sipped his broth. "That or the exercise room. I'll show you where that is, later. I don't know how long the trip will take, but it will take more than a few days, and probably more than a month. I don't want you to feel uncomfortable."

  It was, of course, much too late for that.

  Eleven

  "Aim higher," my captor said mercilessly, as he grabbed my ankle, halfway through my jump, and caused me to fall on my back, with a nerve-jarring thud. "There is more than one vulnerable zone on a male."

  Fortunately for my hard head, considering the number of times he did this on any given day, we were in the exercise room and I had a heavily padded mat beneath me.

  "Had enough?" he asked, stepping back as I rose, trying to get my bearings.

  "I still don't understand how you can move that fast," I said.

  "It's part of the ELFing," he said. "To maneuver in tight spaces. More to the point is how you can move that fast. Almost as fast as I do."

  "Oh," I said. "I always have."

  He raised his eyebrows at me. "I wonder," he said. "If one of ours, a nav, went missing on Earth . . ."

  I picked up a small towel from the pile on the complicated exercise machine next to the padded area on which we stood. I didn't need it. Oh, the exercise had been violent, but the ambient temperature was low and I was not sweating, at least not as such. However, making a show of wiping my forehead provided me with time to think. "What do you mean one of yours? A nav?"