Ghost Ship

by Kathryn Hoff

  Davo slapped his palm onto his knee. “I didn’t come here for a handout, damnit. I got a business proposition.”

  “We’ve got business of our own,” I said.

  Davo scowled. “You can listen, can’t you? Spare a minute for someone that once saved your daddy’s life?”

  Kojo folded his arms. “Spit it out, then.”

  Davo leaned close and dropped his voice like a conspirator. “Salvage.”

  Kojo rolled his eyes.

  The old man nodded. “That’s right. As it happens, I know right now where there’s a vessel, a damn valuable vessel, just waiting for somebody to salvage her. I’d do it myself, but all I have is a little skimmer. I need to partner up with somebody I can trust. Somebody what has a ship big enough and tough enough to help tow this derelict home. A ship like this old cutter.”

  “Sorry, old man,” I said. “We’re just traders. We’ve got no appetite for picking over the bones of a dead ship.”

  “Don’t be so proud,” Davo sneered. “Can’t you see I’m trying to make you rich? I’m not talking about auctioning her off piecemeal. I’m talking about a posted reward from a grateful colony for bringing their own lost souls back home.”

  Kojo caught my eye and raised one brow. He was interested. I tapped the back of my hand.

  Kojo made a show of shaking his head sadly. “It’s not likely the reward would make the loss of time worthwhile. Like Patch said, we’ve got business to tend to.”

  Davo’s eyes turned crafty. “What about fifty thousand rhollium sovereigns for doing the job? That would be worth your time, wouldn’t it? For ten, maybe twelve days’ work?”

  I caught my breath. Fifty thousand sovs. That would be enough to pay off the suppliers who had been badgering us for payment. Refurbish the engines. Spiff up the shabby salon and cabins. To finance a new start somewhere quiet, if that’s the way things went.

  Kojo rubbed his chin, but the crinkles at the corners of his eyes betrayed his excitement. Archer, sitting quietly in a corner, grinned. His restless feet twitched to some internal rhythm.

  “You ask Hiram, here,” Davo said. “I can do what nobody else knows how to do—navigate the Gloom. I have the knowledge. I know every current and eddy, every grav hazard, every radiation field. When this very ship wandered off the Ribbon Road and got swept into the morass, I saved Kwame’s bacon and yours, Hiram, and yes, yours too, Kojo, though you weren’t no more than a cabin boy at the time. Drug old Sparrowhawk out of trouble, guided her home safe and dry.” He sat back as if he’d proved his point.

  Hiram nodded slowly. “That’s so, Davo. We’d never have made it out of the morass if you hadn’t showed up in Hellbender.” He rubbed his arms like he was cold, although there was nothing wrong with the salon’s temperature.

  “See, I know the currents,” Davo said. “I know where a ship that goes missing off the Road is likely to end up. Every so often, I check the beachheads to see what’s washed up. Sometimes I can tow a ship to safety and save a few lives. Sometimes I find a ship what’s been adrift for years, and then I salvage her.”

  I wasn’t sure I was hearing right. “You want to take our ship into the Gloom to find this ghost ship? And trust that you’ll be able to guide us out again? Forget it.”

  Davo’s shoulders slumped. “Kwame would do it. He’d know what I can do, out in the Gloom. You know, too, don’cha, Hiram? Tell these jump-gate-kissers that real pilots don’t need a burzing beacon to find their way home.”

  If only he knew how many times Kojo had sailed us into danger.

  Hiram scratched the bristles on his chin while staring into the blank scanner. “What kind of ship did you find, Davo?”

  The old man’s eyes swept the room as if he was worried that interlopers might be listening in. “A Barony toll enforcer. She musta gone astray during the unpleasantries with Troy. I found her just a few days ago, dead and froze. I ain’t been by there in a while—she coulda been there a year or more. She’s pretty much intact, caught in orbit in a system where flotsam washes up sometimes. I just need some muscle to get the vessel out of her current predicament, that’s all.”

  Hiram grunted. “Barony.”

  “I know,” Davo said, shaking his head. “I don’t like ’em neither. But all I got left in this life is my little skimmer and the knowledge in my head. This haul is my salvation—this one job will keep me going for the rest of my days. Hiram, I’m begging here. Help me out for old times’ sake. Barony’s posted a reward of a hundred thousand for her return. I’ll split it with you even—that’s fair, ain’t it?”

  “A hundred thou’s a lot of rhollium,” I said, lacing my voice with skepticism.

  “The Barony will pay, don’t worry about that. The Barony love their dead heroes.” Davo shifted his gaze between us, looking for a weakness. “They’ll want to pay, if only to keep us from selling their vessel to Troy. They got a truce going for the moment, but with Barony and Troy, it don’t take much to set ’em off again.”

  Davo turned to Archer, as if he knew who had the softest heart. “It’s not just for the money, y’know. Think about the families of that poor crew, waiting for months, never knowing how their loved ones ended up. Why, salvaging that ship is an act of mercy.”

  Archer turned his puppy eyes on me. I scrunched my nose at him in return.

  Kojo scratched his ear, a signal that he wanted to do it. Of course he did—Kojo was a born risk-taker. I touched the back of my hand to signal my disagreement. Hiram looked from me to Kojo, his lips pursed.

  “Bide here a bit, Davo,” Hiram said. “We’ll talk it over.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Old debts

  We left Davo in the salon with a fresh mug of ale while Kojo and Hiram and Archer and I crowded up the companionway to the command deck.

  The cabin behind Sparrow’s wheelhouse served as the captain’s office and wardroom as well as holding bunks for Kojo and Hiram. Archer, in courtly fashion, handed me into one of the two chairs that flanked its small table.

  Hiram claimed a seat on the bunk, moving his orange-and-white cat, Tinker, to his lap. She acknowledged him with a blink, kneading his thigh to remind him that her soft paws hid sharp claws.

  “This might be a good way to stay out of sight,” Kojo said, taking the other chair. “Ordalo put our, um, payoff in escrow until his buyer verifies the merchandise, and at the moment Ordalo’s under arrest. At the very least, it’ll be some time before we know if we’re home free with the Settlement Authority.” Archer knew about our deal to avoid the smuggling charge, but we hadn’t shared with him the full particulars of the threats Ordalo held over us. Not that we didn’t trust Archer—he was thoroughly loyal, just a little naive.

  “I feared as much,” Hiram growled. “Them Selkids ain’t trusting souls.” Hiram was almost a second father to us—especially since he and Papa had been bunkmates as well as shipmates—and he was fully aware of the depth of trouble we faced.

  Lately, I’d begun to keep an eye on Hiram’s lined face. Once the color of old whiskey, he seemed to have faded as age and its aches and pains took their toll. At that moment, even though the ship had been resting in port for days, he looked deeply weary.

  Kojo gazed at the sparse traffic on the viewscreen. “I remember Davo now, or at least I remember someone called Davo hanging around with Dad. Are you sure it’s the same man, Hiram?”

  “Thinner and sicker, but it’s him.”

  “As I recall, I didn’t like him much,” Kojo said. “Is he trustworthy?”

  “Trustworthy?” Hiram waggled a hand. “He might not cut a shipmate’s throat for money.” Tinker blinked at his moving fingers. A tempting target, but she stayed put in Hiram’s comfy lap.

  “We’re not his shipmates,” Archer said. He’d posted himself against the door, one foot twitching. “If he’s offering us fifty thousand…”

  “Then he needs us bad,” Hiram said. “He said the posted reward is a hundred thou, but him offering us half, right off the bat,
ain’t natural. More likely, he’d offer us a quarter of the take.”

  Kojo whistled. “So he’s expecting Barony to pay him two hundred thou? I guess the Barony really do like their dead heroes. How big is a Barony toll enforcer?”

  “About a quarter Sparrow’s size,” Archer said. His knowledge about ships and engines bordered on obsessive. “Five or six crew berths for manning guns and tight maneuvers. Sparrow should be able to tow a vessel that size easily enough.”

  “What about Davo?” I asked. “Can he really navigate the Gloom?”

  Hiram nodded. “He can, no one knows just how. The Hellbender crew used to say he could smell the currents. He always knew where he was, even when the scanners showed nothing but static. He used to make a decent living ferrying goods past the tolls on the Ribbon Road. Drove the toll masters crazy—soon as he got near the blockade, he’d just nip into the Gloom and bypass them. A few enforcers who were fool enough to follow him were never seen again. After a while, they quit trying.”

  Kojo rubbed his chin. “He probably has coded locators dropped all over his favorite routes. Risky, if a few get misplaced.”

  Archer’s foot tapped a complicated rhythm. “I’ve never been to these sectors before. Where or what is the Ribbon Road?”

  “Back door out of Kriti system,” Hiram said. “One of the pathways that heads into the Gloom. Joins up with an ether current what circles around past the colonies of Barony and Troy.” He poked two dimples into the blanket and waggled a finger in a rough, broad circle over them. “This current, it provides a quick way to get between Barony and Troy. It’s got its own set of beacons, but even so, it’s tricky to navigate, winds between gravity wells.”

  He stabbed more points into the blanket. “Changeable, too. Then there’s the politics of it: even though they’re both Terran colonies, Barony and Troy have been at each other’s throats for years, with Barony blockading the side of the current that goes to Troy, extracting tolls to pass, and Troy doing the same on the side of the current that goes to Barony. Every few years, they break out into full-fledged war.” He threw his hands apart, miming an explosion.

  “Forget it,” I said. “It sounds too risky. Maybe there’s a truce right now, but it sounds like a war could erupt at any time. And Davo—maybe he’s being truthful or maybe he’s just crazy. He might not be as able as he claims to navigate the Ribbon Road, find the derelict again, and guide us to safety. Or Sparrow might not be strong enough to pull the wreck out of orbit. Or Davo might be wrong about how much Barony will pay for an old patrol vessel and the remains of her crew. That’s a lot of maybes.”

  “Manageable risks,” Kojo said. “We can drop our own locators so we won’t have to rely on Davo to get us out. If we can’t rescue the derelict, we leave it—we’ve lost nothing but a little time. And if we do rescue it and Barony won’t pay up, then Troy will take the wreck off our hands for enough to make the job worthwhile. I’m for doing it.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not our kind of job. It might attract attention that we’d just as soon not have right now. Most of all, it yokes us up with Davo—maybe you knew him years ago, Hiram, but people change. In his case, it doesn’t seem like a change for the better. We’ve got cargo. I’m for heading out to more civilized sectors to sell it.” While we could. If the Authority revoked probation for me and Kojo, the corridors between star systems would be closed to us.

  Archer asked, “What do you think, Hiram?”

  Hiram shifted on the bunk, earning an annoyed cat-glare from Tinker.

  “Davo’s right about one thing. We owe him. Patch, you were just a babe with your ma, and Kojo, you probably don’t remember it, but there was a time twenty years ago when Sparrowhawk was dead. We’d been caught on the Ribbon Road in the tail end of some fracas between Troy and Barony. We tried to make a run for it, but a Barony concussion blast blew us right off the Road. We tried to get back, but the current was just too strong.”

  His hands must have tightened on the cat: Tinker gave him a soft bite to remind him to be more careful. “Sparrow got swept into the morass, in orbit around a hell-hot planet in a mess of radiation that blizzed our scanners. No markers, no beacons, no way to know where we were or how to get back. We went on skinny mode to save power, hopin’ to last as long as we could, with nothing but a fool’s hope that anybody would hear our distress signal.”

  I’d never heard this story. Neither Papa nor Hiram had ever brought it up in all the hard-drinking, tale-telling evenings. This was something too fearful, too grim to mention, even to us.

  Hiram stroked the cat, soothing her. “I tell you straight, I’d never seen Kwame so low. Me and him, we’d taken our chances plenty of times. He didn’t mind risking his own life, but there you was, Kojo, just nine years old, and it was more’n Kwame could bear to think he’d brought you to such an early death. I told the captain that the kindest thing we could do would be to blow the hatches and make a quick, quiet end. But he held out, hoping for who knows what.”

  Kojo’s brows drew together. “I remember that, or some of it. Dad was worried, but he wouldn’t tell me why. When I complained that I was cold, he dosed me with brandy and huddled with me under a blanket until I fell asleep.”

  I shivered as if the chill of space was creeping in on us. It was every spacer’s nightmare: to die lost in the cold and dark, no one ever to know your fate.

  Hiram sighed. “I’d said my piece and went to the helm, figuring I’d rather meet my end there than lying in my bunk. Then I drifted off to sleep, hoping I wouldn’t wake up when the air ran out. Well, I did wake up. Davo had pulled up in Hellbender. ‘Anybody left alive in there?’ he calls, and I answers, ‘Just about.’ He led Sparrow to safety, and we followed, meek as lambs. Davo claimed a third of Sparrow’s salvage value as compensation, as was just and fair, and we were right glad to pay it over.”

  He leaned forward, his fists clenched. “Y’see, Davo coulda just gone away and come back in a month or so when we were cold and stiff. Then he coulda claimed Sparrowhawk and everything on her as salvage. Nobody woulda known. But he stayed with us, saved us, settled for a third. So we owe him. And if your pa was here, he’d say the same.”

  Davo insisted that Sparrowhawk leave first, following the beacons as if we were making the ten-day sublight slog to Kriti’s jump gate.

  “After a day, when you’re sure nobody’s in scanner range, slip out of the traffic lanes to the coordinates I give you. I’ll bring my skimmer a different way and meet with you there—I don’t want nobody tracking us to my find.”

  I thought Davo was being ridiculous. Who would want to follow a washed-up old man in a skimmer? But he held fast to his secret rendezvous.

  He held fast, too, to his offer of fifty thousand, no more, for our end of the salvage job, and that’s what we ended up shaking hands on. Well, almost—fifty-one thousand, since he needed an advance to pay the port fee for his skimmer.

  As the old man walked away down the dock, I eyed Kojo. “Did we just get taken for a thousand sovs? Davo may be a friend of Hiram’s, but he has con man written all over him.”

  Kojo grinned and slapped my shoulder. “Don’t fret—I can tell the difference between a bluff and a pat hand. He may not be showing all his cards, but he really believes he’s onto a sure thing. Besides, Hiram says he’s the real goods when it comes to sailing the Gloom. It’s time to take a chance, little sister.”

  Kojo. His willingness to take chances was how we got into the mess with Ordalo in the first place.

  I cleared our docking fees with the port master and did a last-minute check through the ship. The salon and adjacent galley were tidy: all the dishes and dice and cards had been properly secured. The passenger cabins were empty, pull-down bunks stowed—if we had to avoid either the authorities or Ordalo’s gang of cutthroats, we didn’t want to have to worry about innocent travelers.

  In the cold storage hold, ranks of power modules were safely tucked into their recharging bays. In the jump cell bays beside
them, we’d stocked enough cells to carry us through the faster-than-light star corridors to a system where supplies would be cheaper.

  In the half-empty cargo hold, the bales and crates were securely lashed to the battens. A glance was all the engine room needed—Archer was compulsive about keeping his tools clean and slotted into their proper places.

  I hit the com node. “All secure for launch, Kojo.”

  “Hatches sealed,” he answered. “Archer?”

  “Engines ready.”

  “All set at helm,” Hiram added.

  “All right, crewmates,” Kojo said. “Time to move out.”

  With a tooth-jarring bang, the port’s lifters launched Sparrowhawk off Kriti.

  For a moment, the ship hung suspended halfway between space and a hard landing. Then Sparrow’s engines kicked in with a deep rumble like a volcano about to blow.

  Whoa. I grabbed for a rail. The ascent heavenward felt more like a fall into hell. My limbs hung as heavy and stiff as iron, my innards sank into my boots. I was used to our raggedy old grav generator’s slow response, but lift-offs shouldn’t be that tough.

  After three long seconds, the ship’s gravity adjusted. My limbs could move again and my stomach resumed its normal position.

  Archer’s voice came over the com. “Um, everybody? Keep in mind that the grav gen will be a little erratic, with all the grav pellets aboard.”

  Hiram snapped back on the com for the whole ship to hear. “You mighta said something a little sooner! Poor kitty here just about clawed her way up my spout.” Unhappy mewing sounded in the background.

  Damn. We’d scoured the markets on Kriti for something worth transporting and ended up with twelve casks of grav pellets and fourteen bales of compressed thistledown to balance them out, plus some miscellaneous junk that Archer insisted had value. The grav pellets needed touchy handling. We’d positioned the barrel-sized casks throughout the ship to keep the concentration from getting too heavy in any one place and messing up the nav. Until we hit a port where we could sell them, we’d just have to live with the bumpy ride.