Darkship Thieves

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  While he was closing the door, I got the burner out, so that when he turned, he found himself facing it, pointed squarely at his forehead.

  His eyes went wide. "Whoa there, sweet thing. Where did you get that from?"

  "My armpit," I said. "Strip."

  This brought a unique look of confusion to his face. "But . . . you don't need to point a burner at me . . ."

  I shifted the place I was pointing the burner at. Less lethal but far more personal. "Ah ah funny. Strip. And don't even think of trying anything."

  I don't know if it was the look in my eyes, or the sheer unlikelihood of the situation that subdued him. One feint towards me caused me to step aside very quickly, then run a burner ray so close to his—by then naked—arm that he must have felt his arm hair curl. "The next one makes you sing soprano the rest of your life. Now bundle your clothes and your broom, open the door and set them outside."

  He obeyed. From the look on his face, he might still have been thinking that it was some sort of fun and games. I waved him aside with the burner. "Sit. On your bed."

  He did. Which is when I used my special speed to run all the way out the door, ducking to pick up the clothes and broom and boots and then around a labyrinth of streets, taking random turns, until I stopped in the narrow space between two burned-out buildings.

  There I pulled on the leathers. They were large on me, as were the boots. To wear the boots I had to wad up a bunch of pamphlets someone had abandoned near a pole. They seemed to be a discourse on the evils of drugs.

  The leathers smelled funky, but were practically sterile by comparison to the biohazard ship. I could live with them. Besides, all my shots for STDs were up to date.

  Minutes later, I was on the broom—a crappy model, but serviceable—and airborne over the ocean, headed for Daddy Dearest's house.

  It was around the island and I had to fly so as not to get caught in the traffic control sensor—that is, keeping either too low or too high to trigger their attempts at identifying the unidentified blip. This wasn't difficult, though, as I was used to doing it anyway, and the habit came back without effort.

  It meant over the city I flew high enough to be in the range where the scanners didn't pay too much attention because if any flyers chose to go that high they were on their own and the seacity traffic control had no responsibility for their safety.

  A lot of intercontinental transport flew at that level, anyway, because it was almost the only traffic up there, and if you were careful you didn't hit each other, and it got you there faster, for which most long flyers got a bonus.

  It required pulling the hood up on the jacket, slapping the oxygen mask on and breathing from the tank attached to the broom. And let me tell you, if I thought that the leathers smelled funky, the mask managed to smell even funkier. I was truly glad my STD shots were up to date. On the other hand, the mask and hood made me anonymous. Or perhaps not entirely, since at least two other broomers flashed me greeting signs. I flashed them back "hello" moving my right hand quickly in relatively innocuous universal broomer language. I wondered if this all-brown leather getup, with the bright patch on the shoulder, was the attire of some specific lair, and prayed that whichever lair it was, there were no lair wars going on involving it. Which was sort of hoping that water wouldn't be wet.

  On the good side, I found my burner, stashed into the belt of the leathers, a great comfort. Forget diamonds or dogs—a girl or boy's best friend is always a high-powered weapon.

  But I found no reason to use it until I flew near Daddy's side of the island. Here I had to be very, very careful.

  I'd never specifically asked, but I was fairly sure that Daddy Dearest had trigger alarms for flyers approaching the house. I would have. It stood to reason if one were so afraid of invasion by sea as to make one's approach a forbidding cliff, then one would also be afraid of invasion by air, which could come at you in just as many numbers, and make defense just as impossible.

  If I could think of the need for defense from the air, so could he.

  The way the mansion was located left only one other option. It sat at the highest levels of the isle, sprawling and classically comfortable. On the one side, it faced a sheer, forbidding cliff that ended in rather deep sea. The cliff was coated in dimatough, so it was as smooth as a mirror and much harder to cut. Though it could—as I remembered Kit doing when he climbed the ship I was trying to steal—be melted by a concentrated burner jet close up.

  On the other side, it had a ramp that climbed slowly from the restored lowest-level neighborhoods nearby and onto the front door.

  Going by that ramp was the only option. It was also suicidal. I hadn't yet reached the point where I was so tired of life that I wished to forfeit it by giving Daddy a bead on me for a very long time, as I climbed that slope. There was no way—no matter that I was wearing borrowed leathers, and even if I kept my mask on, that someone in Daddy's never-ending retinue would not recognize my gait or the way I stood. Besides, approaching the mansion in full illegal broomer's attire could be compared to slathering oneself in bacon before sauntering into a tiger's den.

  That, however, was the only way to get in. Unless I did it my way. The highly improbable, possibly insane route.

  Right. I knew which one to choose.

  Thirty-Eight

  I approached the Sinistra mansion from the sea and, as I got closer, I flew lower and lower, so that by the time I got near the mansion I was flying so low my feet in the too-big boots were grazing salt water.

  As long as the broom worked, it was all right if I froze halfway to death in wet leathers—or went naked. It beat the alternative, which was Kit dying in whatever hellhole Daddy Dearest had stashed him.

  So I flew yet lower, till the broom was barely above water—and that only because I wasn't absolutely sure this model would survive a good dunking. Brooms weren't made openly except in the rogue—and mobile—seacity of Shangri-la. Every other system in the world forbid them strictly. Which meant that they were smuggled in and cost a small fortune, particularly the good models, which were as solid-state and watertight as my handy-dandy burner.

  The cheaper source of brooms, though, and one often resorted to by less pecunious broomers, was the brooms put in flyers to be used as emergency exit devices if something went seriously wrong while you were airborne. Those thus adapted—depending on the flyer they were taken from, which was usually in some flyer graveyard—were often barely air resistant much less water resistant.

  Flying at near-sea level, I assessed the wall. It was sheer and impregnable. Like a spaceship. I remembered what Kit had done to climb the near-mirrorlike side of the collector ship on dock, and I saw absolutely no reason not to replicate the technique here.

  I started by turning off the oxygen and removing the mask. It's not that oxygen and burners don't mix, it's that when they do mix the resulting explosion tends to catch the attention of everyone in the next mile or so.

  Once that was done, I clipped the broom to my belt—while still straddling it—so that as I got off it, I didn't have to worry about its falling into the depths of the sea.

  Then I burned four holes—two at foot level or close enough, and then two further up about where I estimated my hands would go. Well, holes might be a form of expression, since they were actually more like four shallow, concave depressions in the wall—but never mind. Deep enough to allow me to rest my hands and feet in them.

  I gave them a few seconds to cool off—no use cooking my hands—then flew up to where my left foot was level with the foothold. Stuck my left foot in, my left hand above, reached down with my right and turned off the broom, then dismounted and stuck my foot on the right foothold.

  The handholds weren't at exactly the right height, but it was no problem, as I found I needed intermediary holds, about halfway up my body, for my feet to go into, and then further up for my hands. My first assumption that the handholds would become footholds presupposed that I could leap up by my whole body length each t
ime and hold onto nothing.

  I'm not going to say it was easy—it wasn't. Once or twice I put my hand into a still-hot hole and lost skin. Another couple of times my foot slipped and I was left dangling from my ragged fingernails. The only reason I had the nerve to do it at all, particularly as I got halfway up the wall and above, was that if I fell I could always use the broom to avoid crashing headlong into the sea below. Of course, I knew very well that if I used the broom, the motor would likely be enough to set off Daddy's alarms. At least that was my bet. It was quite possible this broom's low energy consumption and low vibration would be below the threshold Daddy had set, but I couldn't know that for sure, and I wouldn't bet on it. With as many illegal broomers as there were on Syracuse, he wouldn't discount brooms as means of attack.

  However I will confess that a little past halfway through, as much as my arms hurt, as much as my fingernails bled, and as much as my whole body screamed that I couldn't go on with it, it took my whole will power to keep myself from just turning on the broom and flying up. But I remembered Kit, and held on.

  I tried to reach out to him twice, but got nothing but diffuse impressions and the certainty that he was keeping the more unpleasant facts of his situation out of my mind and that right then there were only unpleasant facts.

  It seemed endless and hopeless, even when I reached the top. The top—because cliff and wall merged—was the top of the wall of our garden. And because I was very much afraid the top of the wall itself was alarmed—unlikely but possible—I had aimed my course veering slightly right a little at a time to where the branch of a tree—I thought the apple tree near the library—protruded just over the wall.

  By the time I got there, and the branch was within reach, I extended my hand to it . . . and my hand slipped. So, instinctively, I slapped my right hand down on the wall.

  The noise and light were instant and deafening. Intruder in east quadrant of garden, screamed at the top of someone's lungs and then recorded and magnified.

  My hand reached for the broom to turn it on. And then my teeth ground together. No. If I left now, and they knew I was trying to get in, I could never come back.

  They've done experiments with very young children. When scared, most of them run away. A few others freeze and cry in place. And then there are those like me—they run, headlong towards that which scared them.

  In my considerable experience, it was the best strategy. Some writer of the twentieth century said that it was better to be a live lamb than a dead lion, but that it was always better and often easier to be a live lion.

  I grabbed onto the top of the wall, ignoring the deafening noise, and climbed on top. From there it was easy to step onto the branch of the apple tree and hold onto other branches.

  The branches ended close enough to the library window—an oversight for which someone's head would undoubtedly roll, but that was Daddy's lookout—that I could balance on the last portion where I could stand, and then launch myself towards the window. The window of the library was part of the oldest building of the house and not only glass, but glass that had gone all wavy and irregular with age. Since glass is a supercooled liquid—in fact silicon ice—it runs over the centuries. It just runs very slowly. So after a few centuries the middle and above of any glass window will be the thinnest part.

  The leathers should protect me from the worst of the glass, but I held my arms, crossed in front of my face, as I launched myself into the window feetfirst, in a leap that would have won me all sorts of medals had I been in a ballet competition.

  My left foot hit first, shattering the glass, then I kicked with my right, as it hit, to enlarge the opening, because that would make cuts to my body and head less likely.

  I fell on a heap onto a dusty oak floor, on top of a lot of shards of glass. I thought most of it had gone onto my borrowed boots, but I didn't have time to examine them. Instead, I took off running.

  While the library—an old-fashioned affair of the sort that was built in the twenty-first century and never again used since gems replaced books as the main means of storing data—had been my favorite hiding place as a child, I didn't think it would work as an adult. Part of my safety as a child relied on the fact that no one knew I was there—or would think of it. So clambering to one of the top shelves and lying flat was a good way to hide.

  But now everyone knew—or would know in seconds—where I'd come in. So I needed to take advantage of those seconds.

  I took off running full tilt out of the library and managed to push aside a maid and a footman who, to be honest, seemed to just be going about their business and probably didn't even know what hit them. They fell butt-first onto the polished marble floor, and I ran on.

  Daddy Dearest's home was set by zones. In my happy-happy days here, I'd had my own zone, where I lived and kept my clothes and hid my broom, and where my valets and maids were housed.

  Then there was Daddy's personal zone. And then there was this—his private business zone. The public business zone was located up front, and consisted of reception rooms and meeting rooms and other stuff to conduct the business of Syracuse. Uninteresting. And while there were some dresses in my personal clothing I'd kill to have Kit see me in, the all-too-high likelihood that I would have to kill to have Kit see me in them took the fun out of it. As did the all-too-high likelihood that I would die trying to get at the fripperies.

  No, having been discovered, the best thing to do was get about my business and be gone. And, of course, the best way to avoid capture was to go where they didn't expect me. Which, fortunately, was exactly where I wanted to go—Daddy Dearest's sanctum sanctorum. His business office.

  So I took a sharp right in the marbled hallway and ran down a blood-red hallway accented with gilded columns. After my time in Eden, the decor of my home looked even stranger to me. I'd long ago come to the conclusion that it was proof of hereditary madness. Because it wasn't as though Daddy Dearest had remodeled and refurnished the entire house, and yet the oldest parts harmonized with the ones he'd expanded or decorated. They all had unified taste. Bad taste.

  They were decorated, in fact, as if someone with the color sense of a cat had acquired a vague veneer of classical architecture—the bordello kind—and decided to implement both tastes to the hilt. The Sinistra mansion looked like a very majestic bordello over whose walls and ceilings someone had bled massive quantities of arterial blood.

  But I concentrated enough on running to ignore the walls and the columns, the statues of nude and improbably endowed marble fauns and even, as I gained Daddy's office and stuck my hand against the palm lock of his office, the improbable fresco of dancing nude maidens and even more improbable nude youths frolicking about the walls, just above the gem storage units.

  Instead I concentrated on Daddy Dearest's secretary and assistants, who had been doing whatever it is such people do, and who looked at me with horrified expressions, and grew visibly paler.

  I gestured with my burner. "Out. Out now."

  They edged towards the door. The male first—a middle-aged man who had been Daddy's secretary forever. I wondered if I'd ever known his name—which might have proven he had some sort of intelligence. The women edged behind him. Stringy and Bouncy were my names for them and I was fairly sure I'd never known their names. If you went with what Daddy Dearest called them, they were Pea Brain and Bloody Incompetent.

  It's a good thing I know the signs of someone about to do something incredibly stupid. I saw it in Bouncy's eyes before she lunged for me, and I burned the floor just in front of her. A warning shot. Not that marble or the ceramite equivalent burns, exactly, but it stores heat and crackles and is altogether spectacular.

  She jumped and squealed and the male secretary grabbed her arm and sort of pulled her behind him, as he continued backing towards the door and out of it. I realized they were going as slow as possible, hoping for reinforcements, and I burned the ground in front of their feet to hurry them up. "Move it, go. I'm not worth your lives. Trust me."
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  They went. Fast. I kicked the door shut in their wake. Then pulled one of the massive walnut desks in front of it. And then, for double security, burned the door opening mechanism from the inside. Very thoroughly. Which meant I would have to leave by one of the broad windows after I was done. And Daddy Dearest would have been a total fool if he'd not left orders that there would be a broom squadron waiting for me when I came out.

  I didn't think Daddy knew that my handprint could open his doors. If he knew he would have changed the lock. I was also fairly sure he'd never allowed my genprint to open doors as such—why would he, when they led to all his most private places? So it must be a glitch, one that he couldn't possibly know about, or he'd have blocked it. However, I was sure some of his more trusted bodyguards and best goons were authorized to open the door, and I really didn't want to be surprised in there.

  Not that I was where I wanted to be yet. To most of the household this was Daddy's office, where they saw him, sitting behind the burled walnut desk with the seal of Syracuse on it. But once—I must have been three or four—when I was hiding behind one of the cabinets in his office, under the principle that there was no better place to hide than the last place they'd look, I'd seen Father saunter in, shoo his secretaries out, lock the door, and proceed to do a lot of odd things. The sort of odd things you see someone do in old spy holos. Push the frame of a mirror. Open and close the third drawer of a particular cabinet four times. Twirl the knob on a sculpted faun. And on command a door opened in the wall—a door so well disguised by the fresco, and closing with such a narrow fissure, you couldn't find it until it swung open.

  As it did right now, after I completed the actions.

  I entered Daddy's innermost sanctum, and closed that door, also, behind me.

  This secret room must have gone back to all my ancestors, because it was like a packrat's refuge in there, with mementos, decorations and data gems dating all the way back to the twenty-first century or perhaps before. I'd spent many happy hours in there, when I knew Daddy was safely away on his diplomatic trips. I'd gone through most of what must be termed junk on the shelves, reading ancient documents, prodding at old holos. The family—and I supposed I was proof of it—all ran to pretty much the same look. Short, dark-haired, with unruly hair. People always marveled at how much I looked like Daddy and at first I'd been offended, until I found a holo of him as a young man. Not quite pretty enough to be a girl, but close enough that the features, softened, made me—a not-masculine-looking woman.