Darkship Thieves

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  DARKSHIP THIEVES

  Sarah A. Hoyt

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Sarah A. Hoyt

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4391-3317-0

  Cover art by Allan Pollack

  First printing, January 2010

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hoyt, Sarah A.

  Darkship thieves / Sarah A. Hoyt.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-4391-3317-0 (trade pbk.)

  I. Title.

  PS3608.O96D37 2010

  813'.6—dc22

  2009039743

  Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Robert A. Heinlein, the man who pointed the way to the stars, and who taught me that the future is always better than the past. My work is unworthy of the master, but it is the best I have to offer.

  BAEN BOOKS by SARAH A. HOYT

  Draw One in the Dark

  Gentleman Takes a Chance

  Darkship Thieves

  Acknowledgments:

  Thank you to my wonderful publisher, Toni Weisskopf, for letting me play in space. Thank you to Eric S. Raymond for catching some of the technological miscues in the early manuscript. Thank you to the usual gang (pressed) first readers: Pam Uphoff, Amanda Green, Kate Paulk, Rob Hampson, and others, who helped me make this a better story. And as always, thank you to my husband Dan and my sons, Robert Anson and Eric Marshall, for putting up with the insanity as I wrote this.

  I:

  FATHER'S DAUGHTER

  One

  I never wanted to go to space. Never wanted to see the eerie glow of the powerpods. Never wanted to visit Circum Terra. Never had any interest in discovering the truth about the darkships. You always get what you don't ask for.

  Which was why I woke up in the dark of shipnight, within the greater night of space in my father's space cruiser.

  Before full consciousness, I knew there was an intruder in my cabin. Once awake, I couldn't figure out how I knew it. The air smelled as it always did on shipboard, as it had for the week I'd spent here—stale, with the odd tang given by the recycling.

  The engines, below me, hummed steadily. We had just detached from Circum Terra—a maneuver that involved some effort, to avoid accidentally ramming the station or the ship. Shortly we'd be Earth-bound, though slowing down and reentry, let alone landing, for a ship this size, would take close to a week.

  My head felt a little light, my stomach a little queasy, from the artificial grav. Yes, I know. Scientists say that's impossible. They say artificial gravity is just like true gravity to the senses. You don't feel a thing. They are wrong. Artificial grav always made me feel a little out of balance, like a couple of shots of whiskey on an empty stomach.

  Even before waking fully, I'd tallied all this. There was nothing out of the ordinary. And yet there was a stranger in my cabin.

  Years in reformatories, boarding schools and mental hospitals had taught me that the feeling I woke up with was often the right one. Something had awakened me—a door closing, a step on the polished floor.

  Now, why? Knowing the why determined how I dealt with it.

  Three reasons came to mind immediately. Theft, rape, murder. But all of them were impossible. The space cruiser belonged to Daddy Dearest and there was no one aboard save Daddy Dearest, my charming self—his only daughter—and his handpicked crew of about twenty-five, half of whom were his bodyguard goons and half maintenance crew of one description or another. Far more than I thought it would take to run a ship this size, but then what did I know about ships?

  Now, whatever I thought of my father, the Honorable Patrician Milton Alexander Sinistra of the ruling council of Earth, I neither thought him stupid nor stupidly inclined to trust people. His goons were the scum of the Earth—only because there were no real populations on any other planet—but they were picked, trained, conditioned and, for all I knew, mind-controlled for loyalty. Hulking giants all, they would, each one of them, have laid down their lives for my father. Not the least because without Father they'd only be wanted men with no place to hide.

  As for his other servants and employees, they were the best Father could command, in any specialty he needed.

  None of them, nor anyone who had ever seen Father in a white hot rage, would ever do anything against Father or his family. Well . . . except me. I defied Father all the time. But I was the sole exception.

  There were no crimes at our home in Syracuse Seacity. There weren't even any misdemeanors. No servant had ever been caught stealing so much as a rag from the house stores. Hell, no servant broke a plate without apologizing immediately and profusely.

  So the three reasons I could think of for an intruder to be here didn't apply. No one would dare steal from me, rape me or murder me under Father's roof. And no one—no one—who had even heard rumors about me would do so absent a fear of Father.

  Without opening my eyes, I looked through my eyelashes—an art I'd learned through several sojourns at various institutions—and turned in bed. No more than the aimless flailing of a sleeper seeking a better position. The cabin was dark. For a moment I could see nothing. I could turn the lights on by calling out, or by reaching. But either of those would let the intruder know that I wasn't asleep.

  And then, my eyes adjusting, I saw him standing out of the deeper darkness. It was a him. It had to be a him. Broad shoulders and tall. He stood by my bed, utterly still.

  My heart sped up. I tensed. I didn't know who he was, nor what he was about to do, but it couldn't be good. No one with good intentions would come in like that, while I was asleep, and then stand there, quietly waiting. As if to make sure I really was asleep.

  Then I thought it might not be one of Father's people at all. Our security was good. Really good. But we'd just been on a four-day-long state visit to Circum Terra, where the population were the top scientists in their field. Smart people. Smart people who had been isolated for a couple of years. Smart people who had stared and sighed when I walked around and attended parties and was my most flirty self in the clothes that were one of the few perks of being Father's daughter.

  If one of those people had sneaked aboard . . .

  Moving slowly, in the same seemingly aimless movements, I clenched my hands on the blanket about an arm's length apart, and made fists, grabbing handfuls of the stuff. I'd have preferred to twist it around my wrists, so it wouldn't come loose, but that would be way too obvious.

  The man in the dark took a step towards me. He was good. If he was a scientist, he must have been a cat burglar in a previous life. If I hadn't been awake, he surely wouldn't have awakened me now.

  I sprang. I hopped up to the edge of the bed. The ceramite bed rail gave a better surface for bouncing. I bounced on my tiptoes and flew up, blanket stretched between my hands.

  There is this state I go into when in fear or anger. It seems as though I can move faster—and be stronger—than normal people. At least enough to take everyone by surprise. It had seen me through countless battles in boarding schools, hospitals, detention centers. I never understood why people didn't match it. They didn't seem able to.

  As time seemed to slow for me, I wrapped
the blanket over the head of the intruder and pulled, with the blanket still held in both hands. A blanket is the worst garrotte possible. I much prefer a scarf or a rope. But even I couldn't have everything. Where would I put it? Who would polish it?

  As my prey started to flail, I knew that however much slower than I he was, he was stronger. And bigger. I pulled the ends of the blanket I had grabbed, as tight as I could around his neck. It wasn't pliable enough. I needed something big and heavy to crash over his head. But—damn the space cabin!—everything was locked behind drawers and doors. And he was thrashing, struggling, grabbing my arm.

  I did what comes naturally in these circumstances. I lifted my foot, aiming with my heel because bare toes aren't very effective, and kicked. Hard. Right at the center of his manhood. He screamed and let go of my arm.

  Just long enough for me to find, on the floor, the boots that, according to my bad habit, I had taken off and left by the side of the bed. I mustn't have been asleep very long, since my maid hadn't picked them up yet. This meant that most of the people on board should be awake still.

  As I thought this, I grabbed the boot. It was more fashionable than practical, a boot designed for walking indoors and looking good. Fortunately at that time looking good—in the short silk dresses I normally favored—demanded a fairly high heel, plated all around with a thick layer of silver. And chunky, according to current fashion.

  I had just time to weigh it in my hand. My uninvited guest was trying to pull the blanket off and calling out some nasty words that good scientists shouldn't pronounce.

  When hitting someone on the head it's all a matter of knowing the point where it will do the most good. Or harm. Long experimentation had told me the point above the ear would work, only of course, he was moving around too much to make it exact. I did try.

  I visualized my hand going through his head—because otherwise the blow would lack the needed force—pulled back, to gain momentum, and brought the heel of the boot hard on his head. As hard as I could from the disadvantage of a lower height. If he hadn't been half-bent, trying to unwrap the blanket, I'd never have managed it at all.

  As it was, the first hit made him pause. Just pause. He didn't fall and I thought I hadn't hit hard enough, so I hit again, harder.

  He made a sound like choking and went down. The blanket, which he'd managed to loosen most of the way by the time he fell, came off his face.

  "Lights on," I said, and jumped back, holding my boot, because if he came back at me I was going to hit him again, and this time I wanted to be able to see where.

  But as the soft glow shone on his pale face, I recognized Andrija Baldo, the head of my father's goons. And he was very still.

  His square face was pasty grey. The brutal lips another shade of grey. There was a drop of blood running from beneath his hair. I wondered for a moment if I had killed him, and exactly how mad Father would be if I had.

  Then I realized his chest was rising and falling minimally. So, still alive.

  And in his right hand, firmly clutched, was the oval shape of an injector. I knew the color too. There was only one medicine they packaged in those piss-yellow injectors.

  Morpheus. The strongest knock-out juice in the universe.

  Two

  A full injector of Morpheus and I'd have been dead to the world for the rest of the night. Was it really rape after all? Or murder?

  I frowned down at the passed out goon on my floor. Right. Andrija Baldo, who—as far as I knew—had been with Father since Father had rescued him from some correction camp or other, had been about to drug me and . . .

  My mind stopped there.

  Oh, he could have raped me. And maybe I wouldn't even have known, come morning. Or he could have killed me.

  But none of us, and Father's goons certainly least of all, could imagine that we had any real privacy aboard this cruiser. Father had it built to specifications. If there were no cameras and microphones covering every possible inch of every possible compartment, then Father was not the paranoid bastard we all knew him to be.

  So . . . Why would Andrija do this?

  Truth was this whole trip to Circum Terra stank to high heavens. Yes, Father was a member of the Earth's ruling council. But he was not one of those who interacted with the public or who gave the benighted multitudes the idea that they had any say in their governance. Father stayed behind the scenes. He planned things. He hired people. He saw that plans came to fruition. So, why go to Circum Terra? Why meet with scientists whose influence on the public opinion was slim to none? And why bring me along?

  Oh, I was decorative. I'll admit that. I could be decked out and made up and—at all of five-five, with long wavy black hair and breasts the size that make other women call you fat—I could look like the perfect young lady of Patrician class. For a time at least. Before the next clash with Daddy Dearest made me tear a broad swath of rebellion and rage out of his proximity. And four days in Circum were a short enough period to allow me to pass.

  But why would Father want me with him? And why the trip to Circum at all? And if he had to go there, why not use an air-to-space, which traveled much faster and could get us to Circum in a day? Why the huge, slow space cruiser with its full complement of personnel? I shoved the thoughts out of my mind. Nothing I could do about them now, and I must do something about Baldo.

  Alive or dead, an inert goon made for a terrible room decoration.

  I stood by Andrija's unconscious body, holding my boot in one hand. I could shove him into one of the closets around the room, under all the gowns, and then lock my door and go back to bed. And hope he didn't wake up in the night, and come after me. Or I could hope that someone had seen all this on a camera and came to my rescue.

  No. I'd never before waited for someone else to rescue me. I didn't think it would work if I did so now. For one, I couldn't really believe Andrija was working on his own. Not in Father's ship. Not when Father would surely find out.

  Someone knocked at the door. It was a tentative knock—the type people give when they don't want to rouse anyone else. My hair prickled at the back of my neck. If someone had spotted the attack on the security tape and had come to rescue me, the knock would be loud. They would be calling my name.

  But there was only the tentative knock. Repeated. And then the doorknob shook.

  I slid around to the right side of the door. The door was set on a wall with a slight angle, so that the right side formed a shallow angle with the closet. I squeezed myself against the wall there, as the knob turned completely and the door opened.

  A dark head poked in, there was a muffled sound of surprise at seeing Andrija on the floor. I acted on instinct. Before the newcomer could open his mouth to call out, I reached over, and hit him hard with the heel of the boot. He went down.

  As he fell, I recognized Friso Sikke, the second-in-command among Father's goons. What was going on? Had Father's goons all turned on me? Would all of them be coming after me?

  I had to get out of this room. When under attack, a place with only one exit—through which enemies arrived—was the worst possible refuge in which to make a stand.

  I could not wait here to hit them one by one as they came in. I took a quick look down at myself. I was wearing only the thigh-long silk slip in which I slept. I cast a longing look at my closet, full of all sorts of work suits which would be much better for fighting or fleeing in.

  Steps approached. I couldn't take the time. I didn't have a moment. I had to get out before they blocked the door.

  Boot still in hand, I ran out of the cabin. Outside, a broad hallway opened. In the middle of the hallway stood two men. They weren't familiar. Servants. Or at least I assumed they were servants, hired for the trip.

  Blurrily, I noticed they were pushing a grey antigrav platform between them. A stretcher, of the type used for hospitals. I ducked under it. They yelled something as I passed, but I had more important things on my mind.

  My father's cabin was at the other end of the hallwa
y from mine—presumably so that should I decide to hold a party by myself in the dark of night I wouldn't disturb him. Across from Father's cabin was the antigrav well that led to the next level. I ran towards it.

  If Father wasn't in on this, then the safest thing would be to run towards him. I couldn't imagine why Father would be in on this, but all my instincts warned me off running to his room. At the very least, if Father weren't there, or if he weren't capable of stopping their coming after me, I would be stuck at another dead end. The antigrav well, and the working levels of the ship below it, were the only way open.

  I heard screams and running feet behind me, but I'd already jumped into the cushioning currents of the antigrav well. The landing at the other end was soft enough, and I started running immediately, faltering only slightly as I pulled free of the antigrav. I felt more than heard the two men hit the well behind me.

  This corridor was the working level used by Father, not his personnel. During our time docked at Circum it had served a mobile embassy for Syracuse Seacity. Three of the doors on either side led to ballrooms and one to an office/workroom. I had no idea what the other three were for. We had never opened them. At the other end of the hallway another antigrav well led to the servants' quarters and, at the end, to the lifepod bay.

  In between was a hallway twice as broad as the one upstairs, with the walls covered in holo-windows that displayed sunny Mediterranean landscapes—beaches and olive groves and pastoral-looking mountains.

  The ballrooms sprawled spacious, and the office had more places to hide than my cabin, but in the end they remained enclosed areas. Not a good place to get trapped in. Running full tilt on my bare feet, boot in hand, I wondered if one of the other rooms might hide an armory. Unlikely. Our home had an armory, but Father—being almost eighty years old—never used it.