Darkship Thieves

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  Now, each seacity was surrounded by miles and miles of underwater farms, where algae and fish were grown for food and medicine and industry. It wouldn't be out of the question to say that each of the seacities was worth the equivalent of as much as the biggest metropolises of the twentieth century had been.

  But what mattered to me right then is that we were indeed in or, rather, flying towards the edge of Syracuse Seacity, by the time I poked my grimy, slimy head above the ship.

  Why did this please me so much? Because in a seacity created, designed and built from the beginning as an urban environment, every area was densely populated, though some areas—such as the low-rent district we were now flying over, composed of warehouses, narrow streets and robot factories—were less vital than others. What this meant was that to comply with safety regulations, the biohazard ships got around the seacity by going around the seacity. Literally.

  My hopes were answered when I spotted the glimmer of the ocean ahead.

  Of course I had a plan B if this hadn't happened. I always had a plan B. And more often than not a C, and you'd be amazed how many times I'd had to resort to a plan F. Plan B was to jump the next time the ship started its idiotic landing dance and hope that it wasn't over a biohazard site.

  However, I much preferred plan A, as it was shaping up, leading me out over the ocean and about ten feet above it. Because, if you're going to have to jump from a ship, you want to jump into water.

  I waited until we were over water. I couldn't really recognize this area of beach, but the shores off the seacities are not like the shores off real islands. They are never rocky, unless the Good Man was crazy enough to have rocks planted. To my knowledge, Daddy Dearest wasn't that crazy yet, though heaven only knew how he'd be once he learned I was gone.

  As soon as I was sure of not falling on land, I pulled myself up and all the way off the ship through the roof, and fell into the blessedly cool and clean water below.

  I went down, down, down, then up again, broke water, took a deep breath . . .

  Shore was about twenty feet away, and though I knew I was really going on strength I didn't have, I must reach it. And then I must find out how to get to Kit and rescue him. All before Daddy figured out where I was.

  Thirty-Seven

  I reached the shore—fine black sands, created from the initial grinding down of the pseudo coral that build the island. Even though it wasn't particularly hot out—I tried to calculate what the season would be and failed, since Eden kept its own calendar—the sands were very warm. I found a place hidden by the contours of the tiered cliffs that led to the interior. From the smell of the area, this was not exactly a beach. Well, at least not a recreational beach. Unless my memory failed me, this was an area of flyer factories and warehouses.

  The chemical smell seemed to emphasize that it was indeed industrial. But of course, that could have been my own residual smell.

  By the time I reached the shore the strength I'd borrowed from myself had failed me. The hysterical sense of do-or-die fading, I knew I was going to collapse and possibly stay collapsed on the sand.

  So, I buried my burner—not so far down that I could lose it, in fact no further down than a hand's width—then lay down on top of it. Listen, you sleep with a burner next to you on a beach that's not exactly the safest in the world—hell, in any beach—the best that could happen in those circumstances is that someone would steal your burner. The worst . . . could be much, much worse.

  I don't know how long I slept, but I woke up with a questing mind touching mine. I knew that touch and that mind-voice before I was fully awake and responded to it, Kit.

  Thena! You're alive. They said . . .

  I felt for the burner under my body before I woke, and dug for it with my fingers, holding it before I even opened my eyes. Yeah, I could fully imagine what Daddy Dearest had said, probably as a way of asking Kit where I was likely to go. Although what made him think that Kit would know anything of Earth was beyond my reckoning. It was what he did. First assume what pleases you, then force other people to agree with it.

  I tried to probe Kit's mind for what they might be doing to him and what might be going on, but he blocked it with his mind. No. Thena, get to Circum. Get out. I don't know what, but they mean to do something to you. It's not good. Steal a ship. Go back home.

  I opened my eyes, looked around the beach. It was sunset. I didn't know of what day. Clearly, Kit had been told I'd escaped and that I was likely to die if I hadn't already. And my idiot beloved thought I could save myself by leaving without him. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Not only couldn't I imagine going anywhere without Kit, but did he really think that my returning without my husband—my only claim to be one of them—would earn me welcome parades? No. We both go or we die trying.

  Whether they were on my tail or not—and granted they were, because, since when did my father give up that easily—they weren't here. The beach was as deserted as when I'd fallen asleep and though the dry black sand could never allow footprints to be identified, there weren't even any of the holes in the sand left by foot pressure. None but my tracks from the sea, that was. Good. The sea was a lot closer too. Full tide.

  Thena! Despite the vague feeling of urgency and fear and an all-too-real sense that he was blocking physical pain from me, Kit's voice filled with a hint of amusement. There are things even you can't do. I gather I'm in a secret prison. I—

  Shut up, I said. Either we both leave or we die trying. The sounds from the area upcliff from me were those one would expect in early evening. Not much in the whirring of machinery and the clanks of industrial production as there had been during the day.

  Of course, these areas at night were known for broomer lairs. I didn't know of any of them, but then I wouldn't. I mean, it's all well and good to say that my lair were broomers and we were, and as illegal as they came—since no exceptions were made to the laws for children of Patricians and professionals. But we were the children of the high class. Our rebellion was perhaps easier—I thought for the first time with a pang. It had occurred to me that if I'd tried to steal a ship on Earth no one would demand I pay for the damage. Not even Daddy Dearest. But there were a lot more rebels than us.

  The rule of the Good Men might bring peace and prosperity to Earth. I didn't know. I only had Eden to compare it to, and while I granted it seemed far more prosperous, it wasn't necessarily peaceful—I remembered the traffic at center—but it created its share of malcontents too.

  You're not going to let me convince you, are you?

  Uh? It wasn't a question I could take seriously. He knew better. I wondered if there were really broomer lairs nearby or if I was assuming there were because I wanted them to be. No.

  He didn't say anything else, but there was a sense of bright light shining in his eyes, and I tasted blood in my mouth—which had to be an echo of his mind. Damn it. I knew how sensitive cat eyes were. I added a few more cherished fantasies about precisely how I was going to kill Daddy Dearest to my favorite daydreams.

  And then I got up. I didn't know how long I'd been asleep, but I felt rested—also starving. I needed to get on with the business of finding Kit. Because we both had to get out of here as fast and as intact as possible, before Daddy got extraordinarily creative. If he hadn't yet.

  If Kit was in some secret prison, I had to find out where that might be. The logical place to find that information was—curse the luck—my father's computer. Oh, not the mem he carried with him. That of course would be wherever Daddy was, and I'd rather keep out of his sight until I knew with what I was dealing. But Daddy was old-fashioned. One of those ancients who do not trust the mems alone, are afraid of losing something or that someone will break into something.

  So he kept a machine in his office which no one else knew of. Well, almost no one else. I was the sole exception because I had found it, quite by accident, while hiding in the office. I would bet the location of any prisons that weren't public would be stored in that—or in the g
ems he kept in the safe on the wall.

  I had to break into Daddy's house. There was nothing for it. And then afterwards I had to hook up with my broomer lair. Because even I couldn't exactly break into a secret prison alone.

  Well, I probably could. After all, few people kept you from getting into prison. It was getting out again that would be tricky.

  Clearly, I couldn't get from here to Daddy's house—which couldn't even be seen from here—by walking. And it would be a little hard to waltz in, naked, through the main entrance. Dad might hire scum. He did not, as a rule, hire stupid scum. Or not that stupid. Just stupid enough not to realize they didn't want to mess with me. So the very first order of business was for me to get a broom. I would just have to hope that this area did have some broomers.

  The cliffs of Syracuse Seacity were tiered—purposely so to allow people to climb them. You could climb the cliffs from platform to platform, all around the isle except for the part just outside Daddy Dearest's palace, where the cliff was sheer and ended straight in the ocean. For security reasons, natch. Though I couldn't remember any instance of an armed takeover between Good Men, they supposedly had happened often enough in the days after the turmoils.

  But here, I could go from platform to platform of black cliff, with just a normal step in between. You see, when the seacities were organized it was with the idea that they would attract the intellectual elite of the time—the scientists and the creators of technology, the storers and purveyors of data. Not the manual laborers. That had come later, as the world changed and the seacities became separate entities in their own right.

  In the beginning they'd been a way to escape the restrictive rules and regulations of the natural land masses. A way for those who were doing well enough not to see all their money vanish in taxes to support the addled, the incapable, or—a lot more often—the simply lazy.

  So originally this means of accessing the beach had been all important. Old holos showed these beaches full of fashionable people. Not now. As I reached the top of the cliff it was like looking into an old history holo.

  I was looking down the street as it had existed when the seacity was first built. The houses—ranging from pseudo-Mediterranean villas in poured dimatough to pink, mushroom-shaped houses of glistening ceramite—had once been the height of luxury and, this close to the beach, probably expensive enough.

  The thing is that as the seacity population—and industry—grew, it couldn't grow horizontally. Or maybe it could, but there were all these algae and fish farms and things on the bottom and I doubt whoever my ancestor was then wanted to pave over valuable real estate. And that's if they'd kept the technology for the islands for any time. I knew it was now gone. Whether it had been lost with the Mules or in the riots afterwards, no one knew.

  So the island had grown upwards, in terraces of dimatough, supported on columns. As a rule the lower the street, the cheaper and rougher the neighborhood. This one was the lowest one. It didn't exist in the better parts of the isle, not as such, because there no one had built upwards and the old homes had been carefully and lovingly preserved, and were like a historical holo too, of a different kind.

  This one had clearly become a sort of industrial hell. At least some of the houses had become factories—some were only closing now—and if I had to guess, they dealt in the most dangerous and hazardous trades. Narc creation, for sure, because more than one structure, close up, looked like it had blown up from the inside and then burned to all but the outermost dimatough or ceramite shell. Probably making oblivium. It was known to blow up if you cooked it too long, or if you cooked it too short a time and then shook it, or if you kept it at the wrong temperature or if you looked at it cross-eyed. It was street-sold in little dimatough packs, so if it blew up within, all you were out was a truly spectacular mind-scrambling high. Not three fingers and a nose.

  These bottom areas had little sunlight, of course, since having a big terrace above kind of blocked all light. They had artificial lights, but how many and where depended on the location. This area was very poorly lit, which was good. By clinging to the shadows between the houses and the dilapidated sidewalks, I could almost hide the fact that I was naked. At least well enough that I could pass if no one gave me too close a look.

  The burner in my hand presented more of a difficulty. Father is touchy about burners. To own one you have to be one of a few security professionals or, alternately, to not give a damn about Daddy's regulations. Though this area looked rundown it didn't mean it was lawless. Or at least, it probably meant it was only lawless when it was convenient to them. They would protect their own. Which I was not.

  I carefully set the safety on my burner, then reached upward, to hide it in my hair. And had the shock of my lifetime. Where I was used to meeting with curls—and after the last few hours, probably very tangled curls—there was nothing but short, scratchy stubble.

  At first I swayed in shock, but then thought set in. I'd been burned. My scalp had probably been part of it, and I very much doubted that radiation was meant to do a girl's hair good, for that matter. So, I was without hair, for the time being. Gee, I hoped Kit wasn't too attached to my curls. Or that he'd be willing to wait till they grew back.

  I hid the burner. Nobody's business where. Probably not nearly as thrilling as most people will think, but at any rate, it is a trade secret of sorts, and besides, I might need to hide it there again. With it safely hidden, I continued walking between sidewalk and facade, past two probably active narc factories of some sort from the smell. Then down around the corner, past a couple of warehouses that were probably not full of stolen goods, that being just my imagination.

  That was when I saw the broom come flying in, under the upper terrace and between the columns. I followed in the same direction. And found myself on a side street full of what looked like private houses, except that private houses normally don't have guards at the door. And very few of them have neon signs in the windows, advertising all kinds of brews. Bars, I thought. Bordellos. And perhaps the occasional lair—those being the ones whose guards wore full broomer leathers. You see, up there, on a broom, it gets pretty damn cold with the wind whipping around you, and for all the materials available to us, nothing quite keeps the cold out like leather.

  Also, there were girls on the street, some in about what I was wearing, which meant that other than my hair—and that could be a weird fashion statement, for all anyone knew—I could pass. I started walking along the sidewalk, putting a little roll in my walk, so that customers would know that I was up for business. And I hoped someone would bite soon. After all, I didn't want anyone to think I was trying to set up as an independent. Not in a place where there were so many houses devoted to the business.

  But I also had to snag the right customer, see? So I cooled it when a couple of men who looked like local semilegal laborers looked at me, and waited till the right prey came along. Fortunately he did just as my neck was starting to prickle.

  He being a tall blond man, beefy. He was wearing brown full-broomer leathers—the jumpsuit slightly open at the chest to reveal blond hair. The patch near his left shoulder read narc, sack or powerpack. nobody rides for free. I smiled at him and licked my lips and undulated my hips thinking that he was about to get the full meaning of that last saying.

  It brought him to a complete halt in front of me. I don't think he'd been shopping, till what was in the shop window caught his eye. Most broomers—of whatever class—don't pay for sex. They have their own women, usually lair followers, although many of the broomer lairs do not allow a woman to ride her own broom. But then again, there were all-women lairs—normally referred to as Amazons—where the males were treated as arm candy, if they were noticed at all. One of the funniest air battles I'd ever seen had been between the Wicked Witches, an Amazon lair, and the Lavender Buzzers, a male lair who were not particularly interested in women. They had both ambushed a drug transport truck at the same time, then proceeded to battle each other while it got away.
The Brooms of Doom—my own lair—had just stood aside and watched, while trying not to get wrenched muscles from uncontrolled laughter. We were more of the fight-in-a-bar than the stealing type.

  At any rate, this broomer had just decided that whatever he had waiting back at the lair for him, he wanted what I was selling. As I stopped and gave him the minimal inclination of the head that meant I knew he was looking and I wasn't averse, he grinned. "So . . . what are you going for?"

  I wasn't sure what he meant, but I smiled back and said, "Buy me a meal and we can cuddle." This wasn't intentional or fully thought through, except that the smell of greasy spoon cooking from the places we were passing was making my stomach twist with hunger. So I thought I'd better take care of that too.

  He raised an eyebrow, quizzically. "Amateur?"

  Prepared to run if it turned out he was an enforcer for one of the houses, I wiggled. "One time only. I'm just hungry."

  His grin got wider. "Got any eating place in mind?"

  "Anywhere will do." Frankly, I would have felt bad if he'd taken me to a relatively nice place for this area. If he'd paid for something like a steak, I might have had to run away and leave him unmolested. But fortunately, he was trying to get as much bang as possible for as little buck as could be, so he took me to a soup place.

  Either the soup—mostly algae of various kinds—was exceptionally good or I was starving, because I had two bowls before I slowed down.

  And then he led me out of there and to where he parked his broom. I had done my calculations. If he'd left his broom at his lair, I would have to go home with him—or convince him to go home, my being too shy to bundle in a lair—because I didn't think I was in a condition to battle a whole lair.

  Fortunately, I was in luck. He took me to his place, which was a micro-apartment sliced out of one of the bigger houses. And where the first thing I noticed on coming in was his broom, propped up near the door, next to a ratty bed and rattier chair.