Darkship Thieves

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  "Me too," I said. But I was thinking of Kit getting damaged in a way that blinded him and without a nav who could go out and do repairs. I wanted to cry or scream or die. By preference die, because then I wouldn't have to think of it again. I looked at Kit's father. "It's all my fault, you know. They're looking for me."

  He seemed startled. "For you?" His eyebrows went up. "Well, maybe finding out that you disappeared from the powertrees, lifesaving pod and all, gave them the idea we exist. But I don't think they're looking for you specifically."

  I was hugging my knees. "Kit went right into the bay," I said. "In Circum Terra. To rescue me." I realized that over time I'd become convinced that's just what he'd been doing. Made perfect sense. After our mind link, I realized that when I had realized I was ambushed I'd probably screamed out mentally. And Kit had picked it up. Which also had to mean he was hovering far closer than the hour away he'd said he was. "I don't know the exact circumstances, because I was unconscious," I said, and told him the whole story.

  He listened, his eyes rounding. "He can hear you? Mind-talk?" He shook his head. "He is trained. He probably felt your distress from the moment you knew there were armed men around you." He frowned. "But you realize you can't be right."

  "Beg your pardon?"

  He shook his head. "It couldn't have been the same people who were chasing you and then waiting for you in the bay," he said.

  "They were," I protested. "My father's goons. I know them."

  "But . . ." Kit's father said. "How would they know you were going into that bay in particular?"

  I opened my mouth. "They saw me come in?" I asked.

  "But that means they must have had the whole of Circum waiting for you. They must have mobilized observers. That would take a great deal of manpower. It can't be just the men who were after you."

  "But—" In my mind the conspiracy expanded to include everyone at Circum. Perhaps everyone on Earth. Well, at least all the Good Men. Perhaps this was a plot to get rid of the Sinistra line. "But that would indicate it is me they're looking for." I looked at him. "If you send me back, there's a good chance they'll leave you alone."

  "But we can't do that," he said. "They would have you then and know everything about us. And we don't know they would stop. Once they've found us, they might decide to exterminate us."

  I almost told him that they would probably just kill me and forget all about the darkship thieves. But I was afraid he would actually consider it, if he thought only I was at risk. And when it came right down to it, I felt that I, like Kit, couldn't quite muster the will to die. Even if, in my case, part of it was because I'd promised him not to do anything stupid.

  Of all the idiot promises to make, when I'd, in fact, spent most of my life doing something stupid every minute I was awake.

  I waited up with Kit's father, as long as I could keep my eyes open, but Anne did not arrive. No other ships arrived. No news. Finally I crawled into my bed, exhausted, my eyes burning.

  And found I couldn't sleep. Behind my closed eyes passed scenes of Kit alone in the Cathouse, a tractor ray having destroyed all his nodes, without a navigator who could go out and repair them. In these images he was blinded, though I had no idea why he should be, unless the tractor rays were luminous also.

  I knew rationally he wasn't even at the powertrees yet. I knew he couldn't be. But I didn't want him to go there, either. Screw the debt I'd got him into. Screw it all. I wanted to know Kit was safe.

  In my mind I screamed for him to come back, screamed that there was danger ahead. Of course, there was no reply and no sense that he had got it. The ridiculous ability appeared to have a range, which was stupid. What was the point of telepathy if you couldn't just communicate instantly across the universe?

  Probably something designed by the Mules like the stupid, stupid powertrees, the stupid, stupid bio-improvements of ELFed people, and possibly the stupid, stupid bio-wombs. Without bio-wombs, Kit would have died when his mother died, I would have died in the powertrees months ago. In the frame of mind I was in, this seemed by far the preferable consummation to the whole matter.

  My eyes burning as though I'd stared too long at the sun, I lay in bed, and wished Kit back, willed him safe.

  It wasn't that I didn't care for his sisters—I must, at least to the extent that Kit's father would be made very unhappy by their disappearance. And I liked Kath, anyway. I'd seen her for a very little time, but she seemed to be the sort of woman who kept Kit safe despite his own idiotic self-sabotage.

  But if I had to choose one of them to be alive and well, as much as I would regret it, I'd pick Kit. I made the baffling discovery that I couldn't imagine a world without the annoying creature—that I would in fact miss his tendency to lecture me, his obsession with music, even his sullen silences and his tendency to grab my ankle and make me fall on my ass whenever I tried to attack him.

  I don't remember getting out of my bed, much less going to Kit's room. But I woke up in his room. And though I also didn't remember getting his violin case from the closet or opening it, it was open next to me, and my hand rested on the glowing wood.

  Very carefully, I closed it and put it back.

  I had a feeling things were going to get worse and I was right.

  Twenty-Seven

  Over the next few days, the list of ships now delayed grew. Donna and Jim Bova in the Speedball. Sanford and Lillie Begley in Finnian's Rake. Everitt and Dottie Mickey in the Troglodyte. Alan and Margaret Alexander in the Pounce.

  Also over the next few days, I noticed Kit's dad paying more attention to energy expenditure than before. Turning the lights down when fewer people were in the room. Putting two of the serving robots out of commission. Cutting down on trips to the store. "The Energy Board has raised prices," he said. "If that doesn't work to preserve enough energy for urgent tasks, they might have to institute brownouts."

  Good news was much rarer. The next two ships arrived almost together, a week later, while I was at work. Work had got insane overnight, as well, because practically every ship that came in needed major repairs. I worked on bashed nodes, destroyed steering systems.

  I understood the bubble of silence now—or at least I thought I did. Of course my co-workers would assume this sudden viciousness of the Earthers was because I had arrived. After all, this had never happened before. Now I was here and it was happening.

  That they thought I was a conscious spy or a traitor, raining destruction on them and that they were wrong didn't matter. What mattered was that they were right in the essentials. This was my fault. If Kit hadn't saved my life and brought me here, all those people who had self-destructed in their ships would still be alive. It was a sobering thought and a terrible one, not made any better because I hadn't intended any of this or because all the laws of every world, even presumably the non-laws of Eden, gave one the right to save one's own life.

  The death roll haunted me, but not as much as the idea that Kit might be added to it. Most nights I couldn't sleep unless I were in his room, touching the violin. This was insane, because it wasn't as though the violin preserved his scent or a feel of him—which might have calmed my anxieties. But somehow, it made me feel closer to him and therefore I did it, half afraid his father would find out. But his father didn't seem to care. At least not now.

  So I was half asleep and my eyes burned with tiredness as I went through a checklist on the latest ship, trying to figure out whether I'd got every one of the life support systems working as they should. The fact that the nav had made some interesting improvisations didn't make it easier to fix, though I was glad it had limped home, of course.

  And then I heard cheering. It was less than a month since Kit had left, but I wasn't exactly sane—not then. I was flying on tiredness and half a dream and I thought maybe my thoughts had reached him, maybe he'd turned back.

  I dropped my tools and stumbled through the corridors, towards the arrival bay. It wasn't hard to find the specific one, because there was a throng going in
that direction. This will tell you how strange things had become, because normally mechanics couldn't care less when the ships arrived, except when we had to repair or rearrange something the crew had messed up.

  But now a ship arriving at all was a cause for celebration. A ship arriving with actual pods in its hold was an event. There was—though nothing had happened yet—talk of rationing powerpods, talk of prioritizing functions that got power first. How they were supposed to do it without any ruling body, I didn't know.

  I stumbled along, hoping, hoping, hoping that it was Kit who had turned back. But before we even got to the arrival bay, I heard the name of the ship. It was the An Suaimhneas, flown by Ginger and Mary Alice McCaughtan. The crowd seemed particularly happy that the couple's little boy was also safe and the ship undamaged.

  It wasn't till I got to the bay that I heard the name of the other ship—and it was definitely not the Cathouse. It was the Freedom, flown by Hugh and Amanda Green. Amanda Green, the nav, a tall, imposing woman with strawberry curls, was talking loudly to the receiving officer, as I got back. I could hear the echo of her words, on the emphatic parts. Explosion, salvageable, arrival, light beam and then a name that chilled me to the core, Anne Denovo.

  Not Kit's sister. I thought of what this would do to his father. I thought of what it would do to Kit. I knew from his mind how much he loved his family, how attached he was to them.

  I couldn't hear anything else, above the crowd noise. But before I could push my way to the front or ask someone what she had said, someone near me repeated it to a friend. "The Earthworms are using a light ray, trying to blind the cat and confuse the nav before they can self-destruct. The Greens saw Anne Denovo's Fireball get hit with it, but it got them with a powerpod on the grabber, and the powerpod blew."

  "They're dead?" the friend asked, as I felt as if someone had dipped me, headfirst into ice.

  "No, no," the first speaker, who sounded like Darla, said. And before I could take a full breath of relief. "Fortunately the nav wasn't in his cabin, which was hit pretty hard. They're both fine, but they have asked for special landing, because the ship will have to be radiation scrubbed. About half of it is unusable."

  I rushed away from the crowd, and thumbed my ring to connect to the Denovo compound. I got Kit's dad, and started to tell him, "Anne is—"

  "I know," he almost shouted. "Isn't it wonderful?"

  And it was, of course, and I was the last person to tell him I wanted his son home. Instead, I assumed—rightly—that the household would be celebrating. I also assumed I wouldn't be welcome to the celebrations, though perhaps I would. You really couldn't tell with this family. They'd been more forbearing and kinder to me than anyone could imagine. The fact that through the long nightly vigils with Kit's dad, waiting to hear on arrivals, he'd never once said this was all my fault, probably meant they were a very forgiving clan. But all the same, I couldn't go back. Not to a celebratory dinner, which Kit's father was now talking about.

  I couldn't go and celebrate anything, while I knew there was a very good chance I might never see Kit again. I excused myself and explained I'd be working a double shift, then went and signed up for it. It would mean leaving the building late at night, but I figured if no one had killed me yet—something I was sure I owed to the prestige of the Denovos and to whatever terror Kath seemed to strike in the minds of her colleagues. The terror was true, I'd seen it. And I figured that it was the only thing standing between me and a quick death.

  When I left the compound, late at night, exhausted, for a moment it was as though I were back on the day of my arrival with Kit. Particularly because I was using his flyer.

  The compound wasn't empty. Or at least the garage wasn't, as several people had worked double shifts. We were trudging into the garage, where the light was burning at half-power, when I heard a sound.

  I can't tell you what made me pick the sound over the scraping of feet, the opening of flyer doors, the slamming of other doors, the woosh of warming engines, but I did. It was the slip-slide of a burner safety being pulled off.

  Because in mind I was back to my arrival here with Kit, I dropped to the floor, before even thinking. And as if it were a bad recreation of that day, a burner ray flew over me, burning a hole into the pilot door, exactly where it had been before.

  I couldn't think. At least not clearly. But I could move. Before I could stop, I had leapt in the direction the sound and the ray had come from, and I landed on Joseph Klaavil.

  Not being rational or under my own control, I was wild, insane, a state I normally only reached at the end of a furious fight.

  Each of my actions registered only as I completed it, and I became aware I'd done it. I'd torn the burner from Klaavil's hands and thrown it, not caring that with the safety off it might fire when it hit. And I'd hit him hard in the place that Kit said I liked hitting men—and then both knees before he could fall.

  And because I wasn't rational, I found myself standing over a man curled in a fetal position, while I rained punches on him with my bare hands and screamed an incoherent babble about his being a murderer, about his having tried to kill Kit, about my killing him, killing him now.

  I stopped to catch my breath, my face covered in tears, my breath coming in ragged sobs. Through the sobs, I heard voices from the crowd that had assembled to watch this.

  "She attacked him for no reason," one said, clearly having missed the first shot.

  "She's going to kill him."

  "Cursed Earthworm, protecting that murderer, Christopher Klaavil."

  And I realized, with a sudden shock that I was doing exactly what I'd told Kit I wouldn't do. I'd promised him not to get in trouble. I'd promised him not to kill anyone, and not to make him pay blood geld.

  All of me, all my impulses, all my thoughts, wanted to kill, to destroy, to maim. But I couldn't. Not and have yet another debt accrued to Kit. Kit who had put up with all of this, Kit who didn't want this creature killed. Kit who had best come back and soon. Kit who was a cat and therefore couldn't challenge a normal person to a duel.

  I stepped back. My voice shook, but I yelled as loudly as I could, "Joseph Klaavil, I'm challenging you to a duel because you have several times and without cause tried to kill me and Cat Christopher Klaavil."

  He sat up at my words. His lips moved. His "I accept" was spoken in a low voice, but it echoed through the garage. The crowd cheered, and I was fairly sure it was for him.

  And I . . . I was in more trouble than I knew how to deal with. I climbed into the flyer and closed the belt around me.

  I'd best go see Doctor Bartolomeu. This asking for aid thing was odd and I'd never done it before in my life. It wasn't fear for myself that forced me to it, it was fear of injuring Kit further.

  Twenty-Eight

  "What have you been doing to yourself?" Doc Bartolomeu asked, as he opened his door. He had much the look of someone continuing an interrupted conversation and acted as though I should have my response ready.

  I don't remember what I mumbled, at the door. He took me in and sat me in one of the tall, padded chairs, and put a cup of hot chocolate in my hands, and somehow—I still wasn't discounting the idea that he was some form of supernatural being—I found myself telling him what had been going on in my mind. I would never tell it to anyone else, but it just came pouring out of me. Of course, he didn't play fair, and perhaps he had put something in my hot chocolate. He was a doctor after all.

  At the end of long and often contradictory outpourings, I found myself staring at him, while he stared back at me, frowning slightly, not as if he were mad at me, but as though trying to solve a problem. "So you came to me over the duel?" he asked.

  "I . . . well . . ." I thought I had. "The duel made me realize I should come to you. Kit told me to come to you if there was something I didn't want to discuss with his father, and today of all days . . ."

  "Would be a very bad day to discuss duels with Jean Denovo?" He nodded. "Probably, though you realize that there are o
nly about two hundred ELFed families—or at least ELFed for energy collection—and therefore everyone knows everyone else. He will hear of your duel challenge."

  I thought he would be quite likely to throw me out, then. Father would have, had I got myself in that sort of position. They'd put up with me so long . . . "And of course, once I'm out of Denovo protection," I said, "I will be . . . Everyone can call me a spy or challenge me to duels."

  He gave me a very curious look, his dark eyes sparkling under bushy eyebrows. "Eh. Don't jump to conclusions." He paused and looked at his fireplace, which was burning brightly, though it didn't seem to make the room really warm. And I supposed it wasn't a true fireplace—not log burning—because where would Eden find that many logs? If cows were expensive, wouldn't logs be also? "You didn't come to see me because you thought Jean would cast you out, did you?"

  I shook my head a little, then shrugged. "I hadn't even thought of that," I confessed. "I haven't been sleeping really well. I worry about where Kit might be . . . what . . . how he'll survive this mess. No. I was worried because I wanted to make sure that Kit wasn't going to pay for . . . that he wasn't going to go further in debt because I kill Joseph Klaavil. And then, you know . . . Kit has kept the man alive all this time, heaven knows why. He could have killed him and paid blood geld, but he keeps saying that Joseph is his parents' only remaining child, and he clearly means that he shouldn't be killed. And now I've challenged him to a duel." I put my face in my hands and moaned as I realized the complete mess I'd made of things. Why did I keep getting myself in these situations that spun out of control?