Darkship Thieves

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  Still, one of the other rooms might hold something . . . Or it might lock securely till I could figure out my next step.

  In despair, I slowed enough to test the door of the first room I'd never opened. And found myself staring at a state-of-the-art operating room. Father lay on an antigrav stretcher.

  I had time to register that he was clearly unconscious before a hand touched my arm. I felt more than heard movement behind me and spun around, in combat mode, that mode in which I felt as if I were going twice as fast as everyone around me.

  The boot, clutched in my hand, caught the medtech full force on the forehead. He grunted and stepped back. This surprised him just long enough to allow me to pull my arm free and run again.

  No escape there. No escape in the medical rooms. Medical rooms!

  Why were there medical rooms in a space cruiser? There was no way we could take a trip longer than a week. There was nowhere to go! The moon bases didn't take visitors—not even Good Men—and even so, it only took two weeks to get there. What could happen to Father in two weeks? Father was old but not that old. And he was in good health. Father. Why was Father unconscious in a medical room? There had been . . . trays of instruments. Medtechs. And medical machinery. Why?

  I legged it as fast as I could towards the antigrav well. A sudden shrieking alarm broke the silence, and then a strobe light effect kicked in, making the Mediterranean landscapes on the walls look like they would if the Earth was hit by a meteorite cluster.

  The voices that went with the shipboard alarms came in over speakers, seemingly from everywhere at once. One of them was the fire alarm saying, "Fire, fire. Please rush to the lifepod bay." The other one was the one for piracy and it said, "There are intruders aboard. Please secure your area and do not leave." And yet another talked about a mechanical malfunction and my absolute need to rush to assist.

  It seemed to me that someone had clapped his hand across all the alarm buttons. In my particular emergency—unable to understand what was going on—finding an area I could secure seemed like a really good idea. Perhaps the kitchens downstairs. Kitchens would have knives and cookers and poking implements that could cut and stab and burn. They also contained provisions.

  Once, at twelve, I'd held an entire finishing school at bay and barricaded myself in the kitchen for a week, until Father had come to get me.

  I threw myself down the grav well. Landed ready to run. For my money, of all the self-defense, street fighting and other offensive arts I'd taught myself, the best training of all as far as running and staying on my feet and even fighting back had been my time spent at the ballet school in Paris when I was fourteen. It helped me keep my balance now, as I landed on tiptoes and leapt out of the antigrav field.

  I loped two large steps down the hallway. And became aware of steps behind me. Coordinated steps. Large, heavy bodies on large heavy boots, hit the floor in the grav well, and fell into a run as easily as I had.

  A look over my shoulder showed me what remained of my Daddy Dearest's goons. They were dressed in full dimatough armor from head to toe. At a casual glance they looked like men in black masks wearing suits made entirely of black scales. Which they were. They were also men protected by material that nothing—not even diamond—could cut.

  Nothing I might find in a kitchen could hold them at bay. It would have to be the lifepod bay.

  The clump-clump-clump of their boots behind me cut through the mishmash of warnings, sirens and alarm bells. I wondered why no one came out of the kitchen or other dependencies. Where were they? Had some word of warning gone out? Or were most of them in their dormitories and confused by the cacophony of alarms? Of course, Father's long-time servants knew me. Not one of them would volunteer to grapple with me.

  At the end of the hallway, the huge double doors led to the lifepod bay. Next to them was a panel for the palm print that would allow one to open the doors. I lay my sweaty palm against it. I was afraid it wouldn't open. The law said it had to be coded for everyone aboard. But this was Father's cruiser, and where Daddy was concerned, laws happened to other people.

  Slowly, ponderously, the door started sliding open. One handspan. Two. I slid through into the opening and squeezed into the bay.

  Inside, the lifepod bay was cavernous, and lifepods were set in a circle around the bay, each of them in front of its own eject lock. There were thirty-five. Enough for everyone aboard. I dove towards the nearest one.

  And saw one of the goons—from the bulk, Narran, another of Father's favorite bodyguards—near the control panel inside the lifepod bay. He was about to press the button that would lock the lifepods. Not that I knew there was such a button, but it stood to reason. He could prevent my leaving.

  Instinct is a wondrous thing. I turned around, grabbed my slip and tore it, top to bottom, exposing my naked body.

  It was only a second but, if I knew the male brain—and I did—long enough to short-circuit his reactions for a couple of seconds.

  Enough for me to jump into the lifepod and push the red eject button. I suspected once that was done nothing could stop it. But still, relief flooded me as the pod shot out into the membrane that divided it from the airlock. The membrane opened to let it through. Then the other membrane opened.

  I shot out into space in the lifepod—which was a triangular vessel made of transparent dimatough and barely large enough to hold me—in an awkward position, effectively straddling the central axis of the vehicle, with my knees and legs on the floor of it, and bent forward over controls that consisted only of a joystick and a com button.

  Trembling, I took a deep breath. Whatever was going on, I was sure my father's goons would follow me as soon as they could strip off their dimatough armors and squeeze into the lifepods.

  I had to get away from here. I had to get help.

  Grabbing hold of the joystick, I pointed myself towards Circum Terra, which hung like a glowing doughnut in the eastern quadrant of the sky. With my free hand I pushed down the com button.

  "Help," I shouted into whatever frequency might be picking up. The cruiser for sure, but perhaps Circum Terra too. "My name is Athena Hera Sinistra. My father's space cruiser has been highjacked."

  Three

  I woke upside down. Opening my eyes, I realized I was in a lifepod, surrounded on all sides by space. So it wasn't strictly true that I was upside down. Lessons from childhood bobbed up in my mind. In space there's no up nor down.

  Which was another of those things like antigrav not making you sick to your stomach. It's fine to say that, but clearly the scientists who thought so didn't live in my body. In space, with null-grav, with a minimal vehicle between me and the void, everything was upside down. Always.

  I tweaked the joystick to bring me "up" the other direction, but I still felt upside down. It must be two hours at least since I'd fallen asleep. The reasons for falling asleep of course were that I was exhausted, Circum Terra wasn't answering, and the pod moved straight ahead at a constant speed no matter what I did.

  But now things looked more interesting. In front of me, Circum Terra loomed—doughnut shaped, shining with the lights of myriad docking stations and beacons. And behind me . . .

  Looking over my shoulder, squinting, I could see a straggle of other lifepods, in hot pursuit. Er . . . in pursuit as hot as they could manage. Which wasn't much. These lifepods had no speed controls. They had a fixed speed and—I thought—twelve-hour air supply. I wished I'd paid more attention to Father's lectures about the lifepods. But I knew they all had fixed speeds. And so Father's goons were as far behind as they'd been when they'd left the space cruiser.

  I had to get to Circum, dock and make my case quickly. To be honest, I doubted anyone would take the opinion of the goons over mine, but one never knew.

  I looked down at the front of my torn slip. Not much chance of making myself look respectable before I reached Circum. As for my hair, with the best hairdressing in the world, and lots of work, I could tame the wild black curls. With my fingers,
in a small space vessel, I'd have to hope I didn't look too savage to ask for refuge.

  My eye on the goons behind me—just in case they magically gained on me—I reached for the button of the com, and pressed it. Before I could open my mouth, a voice came from it. Father's voice.

  "Athena Hera Sinistra," he said, "has left my space cruiser while hallucinating. She might be in the grip of mind-altering drugs. She must be believed to be armed and dangerous. We're asking Circum Terra to detain her till she can be retrieved by my employees."

  Several shocks hit me in succession.

  First—the com was two-way? My mind accommodated to this quickly, though. Of course it was two-way. How else could a base talk a stranded castaway through landing?

  Second—my father was talking? My father? Last time I'd seen Daddy Dearest, he looked about as likely to talk as to sing opera. So what had happened? Had he been behind this all the time?

  No. I couldn't imagine Father being part of any plot that involved his lying there, in a medical room, cold and dead-looking like landed mackerel. I knew for a fact that most procedures he'd had done on him, from minor regen to surgery he had insisted on local anesthesia only, because he didn't trust anyone to operate on him while he was out cold.

  So . . . no. Father wasn't behind this. He couldn't be. But whoever was either had awakened him and forced him to issue this warning, or found a way of faking his voice—not hard with computer generation—so that it even fooled me—a little harder, but possible.

  That it was recognizable as Father's voice was all that mattered. No one at Circum would doubt it. Not for a minute.

  And though I'd been on my best behavior while in Circum—the charming socialite Athena Sinistra—I was sure even they got casts. And the casts had been full off and on of my misdeeds. The running with wild broomers. The time I'd flown my broom right up against a wall and everyone had thought I'd die. Drugs? They'd believe that. Psychotic behavior under drugs? They'd believe that too.

  This was the last shock, and the worst of all. Because it dawned on me slowly: I couldn't go to Circum.

  And this was a problem indeed. Because space lifepods depended on the fact that the ship in trouble would have sent a rescue signal. And faster ships would have come to rescue any survivors within hours.

  This meant . . . I had oxygen for a few hours more—I wasn't sure how many as I didn't know the speed of the lifepod nor how long I'd slept. Not nearly enough to make it to Earth.

  I looked behind me, at the lifepods pursuing me. The formation they were in. I could only go to Circum or into the dangerous powertrees. They'd never catch me before I made it to Circum, but what was the point, if they could capture me without getting there before me?

  I thought of my time in Circum Terra. I'd flirted with scientists and befriended techs, but the ones I'd felt most comfortable with were the powerpod harvesters. These men, who risked their lives daily navigating through the thorny, dark labyrinth of the powertrees and harvesting the unstable powerpods, were somehow the same kind of person I was. We were kin. We understood each other.

  Now, with Circum up and to my left—well, to my insides everything felt like down and left, but it was relatively above the lifepod and I knew it—I had the forest of powertrees, the powerpods glowing upon them like captive fireflies to my right. Earth cast its shadow on us and put us in night.

  If I couldn't go to Circum, why not the powertrees?

  Fine, fine, any rational person would refuse to consider the powertrees. Ever. But I was never a rational person. And what choice did I have? They wouldn't pursue me in there.

  And if I could find a harvester there, in the forest of coiling branches, if I could get the harvester to take me on, I'd have a chance, wouldn't I? I could talk to the harvester operator and convince him of my story, and get him on my side before I landed in Circum. I might have a chance. Just a slim chance, but better than none.

  I veered off towards the powertrees. Calling them trees is, of course, a misnomer. They have no trunks and no roots. They are rather a conglomeration of twisting branches with what appear to be gigantic thorns growing out of them. And here and there, amid them, the powerpods in various stages of ripeness, radiation glowing through their skins.

  What did I know about them? Absolutely nothing. Or nothing more than you learned in your primary programs. That the trees are a biological solar collector, planted and grown in the late twenty-first century during the reign of Earth's bio-lords. That they were fed organic matter from Earth via the ancient beanstalk that predated Circum Terra and which was no longer safe for people, but which still worked perfectly for cargo. That they collected the sun's radiation into the powerpods which, in turn, brought to Earth, powered our civilization.

  How the trees grew in space, in vacuum? No idea. Clearly they were a closed system, their skin immune to the vacuum of space. How? No idea. But then again, neither had our leading scientists any ideas. The bio-lords, fortunately deposed in turmoils long before my birth, had been bioengineered to be well beyond our intellectual capacity. None of us could match it. But we still used the power system. All of our technology was keyed to it. And it was so abundant and inexhaustible.

  Even the harvesters had no idea how the trees grew in vaccuum. All they knew was how to pick the pods at the sweet spot between ripeness and instability. Too little ripe, and they would have too little power, barely worthy transporting to Circum. Too much and they would blow up and take the harvester with them before ever getting to Circum's extruding chamber.

  Oh, another thing they knew—or said they knew—and that was that darkship thieves, the descendants of a few escaped bio-lords, lived somewhere beyond the stars and stole ripe pods. Or so they'd told me. I wasn't sure it was a true legend, or the equivalent of stories to frighten a child.

  I'd given them no thought at all—not until I found myself flying into the tangle of powertrees.

  The joystick was sweaty in my hand, and it was hard to maneuver—even this small a ship—between trunk and powerpod, carefully, carefully. Harvesters had precision controls and computer-aided steering. I had a joystick and an unwieldy lifepod that reacted just a little too slowly.

  Down over a branch, I dodged above the next just in time to avoid smashing into it, and then there was a huge powerpod in front of me, the fissures in the skin indicating it was overripe and about to blow. I twisted sideways and barely skidded away from it. And found myself threading a needle hole, barely large enough for the pod to dive through. I hoped.

  I swallowed hard, as I went into it. I'd have prayed if I believed in gods.

  And then, out of nowhere I hit something. Not hard. And whatever I hit was not as deadly solid as the diamond-hard trunks and certainly no powerpod. For one, it didn't blow up.

  Even after hitting it, I couldn't see what it was. It was . . . dark. Straining, I could make out a rounded outline, but barely distinguishable from the surrounding gloom.

  My throat closed. It was a darkship. It was a darkship piloted by the descendant of the biorulers. The biorulers had been inhumanely intelligent, modified to be that way. They'd also been unable to reproduce—leading to their being called Mules—to ensure that the human race survived. But if this was a descendant, they must have been able to reproduce. Or was this one of the original biorulers? How long did they live? And what did they want with us? Their rule of Earth had been utterly ruthless. They'd moved and eliminated populations without regard. What would they do with me?

  In a panic, I looked behind, looked around for a harvester. But there was no one in sight. I tried to move away from the ship, but I seemed to have caught somehow. All I managed was a long, painful scrape.

  And all of a sudden my com button pushed itself down and a voice came over it. A deep, male voice, with an odd accent. "Blazing Light," it said. "Why are you scraping my sensors?"

  I froze. This thing wasn't a ship. It was a creature. A dark, huge and powerful creature. And I'd injured it.

  Four
r />   "Sensors?" I said, in the general direction of the com, sounding far less assured than normal.

  There was a pause. Then the voice said, "Light," as though that ought to mean something. "Ship sensors," the voice said at last.

  I blinked at the dark sphere. So it was a ship? Not a being? I felt fearful, which was odd.

  It's not that I didn't understand the meaning of fear. I understood it perfectly. Fear was what little old ladies who ran expensive boarding schools felt when they took a look at me. That was why they refused to admit me, unless Dad brought force or money to bear. Fear was what larger young men who ran military academies felt after I got the first one over on them. And that was why they called Daddy Dearest in hysterics and demanded I be taken home again.

  What I didn't understand was feeling fear. But neither could I deny I was afraid of this dark, secret ship—this legend come to life. Could it just be another type of harvester? What, all black? To . . . what? Allow its fellows to ram into it? Or to play a prank on tourists? Except that Circum Terra and the powertrees were not open to tourists. Only to butting-in juvenile Patricians. And those were few and far between.

  Trying to understand who this might be, trying to figure out how to react, I stayed quiet long enough that the voice said, in the tone of one who has reached an unpleasant decision, "Right. I'm bringing you in."

  Bringing me in? "Bringing me in to where?"

  "The Cathouse," the voice said, with an absolutely matter-of-fact tone.

  I blinked, and my panic receded. The whole sequence of events from waking up with Andrija Baldo in my room to some space-borne bordello's kidnaping me only made sense—and perfect sense at that—if one assumed that I was dreaming.

  The certainty that I remained safely tucked away in my bed, in the space cruiser, kept me still and only mildly curious as something grabbed the lifepod. I didn't know what it was, not to draw a diagram, but it looked like a mechanical claw that enveloped the transparent ship from all directions and . . . pulled and shoved. My stomach, already tempted by lack of gravity, now did its best to catapult towards my mouth.