Ghost Ship

by Kathryn Hoff

  That explained why Barony was willing to torture prisoners who might know where Grand Duchess was, and to offer a huge bounty for her return.

  My calculations took me a little further: Davo had said Duchess was lost a year ago. The colonists would have spent some time hoping she’d turn up, but eventually they’d have turned to some black-market broker to locate and negotiate the purchase of a replacement synthreactor.

  Someone like Ordalo.

  And suppose that broker had found a synthreactor in some distant sector? All they’d need would be some dupe to smuggle the replacement to Kriti through all the intervening star corridors and checkpoints.

  Some dupe like Kojo and Sparrowhawk.

  And that replacement synthreactor was now circling a moon between Kriti and the jump gate, waiting for Ordalo and his buyer to pick it up.

  I was beginning to nod off when a crewman who’d been working at a console looked up. “I’ve got the derelict’s message logs, if you’re interested, Squad Leader.”

  Bell nodded tautly. “Let’s see what happened to that ship.”

  The coms officer skipped back through Grand Duchess’s outgoing messages.

  …vessel Grand Duchess, in distress. To anyone hearing this message, please assist us. This is Barony expeditionary vessel…

  The automated plea filled the cramped cockpit. It tore at my heart to know it had been repeated into empty space by the dead ship, hour after hour, day after day, month after month.

  Squad Leader Bell began to look on me and Archer, if not with sympathy, at least with less active distaste. She asked the coms officer, “How far back does this go?”

  “Thirteen months.”

  “Let’s see the last log entry.”

  The screen resolved to the image of a man in a Barony enviro suit—the frosty captain I’d strapped back into his seat only a few hours ago.

  “…reaching the end of our power. All environmental resources have been directed to the bridge. I and my first officer will hold out here as long as possible in an attempt to complete our mission. All crew members have voluntarily returned to their unheated quarters to await death.”

  Bell listened with a hand over her mouth, eyes grim. “That’s no way to die, even for a Barony crew.”

  Those of us who sailed the ether faced the perils of gravity and radiation every day. We dodged rogue asteroids and felt the heat of suns, but above all we feared the cold. The life-sucking chill of space was always with us, just on the other side of the fragile skin of our ships, waiting for the smallest breach. The danger was always in the back of our minds as we calculated energy drains and counted power mods, knowing that to run out of power would be to run out of life. And any encounter with a frozen ship was the starkest possible reminder—this could happen to you.

  Some people said freezing to death was peaceful. But the frozen bodies I’d seen, including the Barony captain and first mate, seemed to glitter with the crystallized bitterness of their last moments of blame and regret. Each frozen, contorted face seemed to say, Not this way! This is not how my life should end.

  The recorded glint of the Barony captain’s eyes in his last message seemed just as icy as when I’d found him a few days ago.

  “It has been agony, waiting, helpless, as our power is slowly sapped. The single ship that promised help twenty days ago has not returned, nor have we had any communication from anyone looking for us. I can only assume that ship was lost as well—or that the captain is allied with our enemies and had no intention of assisting us. If that is the case, then I can only curse him, that he may suffer the same agonies we suffer as we await our death.”

  I shuddered, although the cockpit was plenty warm. If ever a man could make a curse survive his death, the Barony captain was determined to try. Hadn’t I felt his hatred from the moment I set foot on his ship?

  Even Squad Leader Bell rubbed her arms as if she felt the cold. “Go back twenty days. If it was a Troy ship that failed to report a distress call, I’ll have them up on charges.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  It took more than a minute, more like twenty, before the coms officer resurrected a fuzzy image. “The file is corrupted here, but I think I’ve got it.”

  The screen displayed the blip of a small vessel. An audio message said, “Yessir, I gotcha. I’m sorry I can’t do more to help, being nothing but a skimmer, but don’t you worry, boyo. I’ll head back to the Road right away and let Barony know where you are. Four days, five, tops, and your militia’ll be sending out a rescue. You just hold on.”

  I felt sick.

  Archer turned to me, shock widening his eyes. “Is that…?”

  I nodded. The blip held no identification of the ship, but I didn’t need it. The voice belonged to Davo.

  CHAPTER 23

  Betrayal

  Davo had left Grand Duchess to die.

  He’d come across Duchess circling the Shipkiller planet, just as he’d said. Only she hadn’t been a year dead—she’d been intact with all eighteen souls alive. Alone in his skimmer, he wouldn’t have been able to do anything, except to carry a message and send help to her.

  Which he’d promised to do.

  But instead, he’d gone away and told no one—not Barony, not his crewmates—leaving Duchess to freeze to death.

  Waiting for a time when he could safely return and salvage her for his own profit.

  As far as I was concerned, that made him a stone-cold killer.

  No wonder the spirits of Duchess’s crew were vengeful: for all practical purposes, they had been murdered—by Davo.

  At least I knew the answer to one question now: why Davo had clung to his secret even though his knowledge could have freed his crew from prison. He hadn’t dared to lead Barony to Duchess, because doing so would have revealed his role in eighteen agonized deaths.

  No wonder he’d tried to divert us to Troy instead of collecting the bounty from Barony—they’d be sure to recognize his voice after having him in custody for nine months. And once they identified him, the Gloom wouldn’t be big enough to hide him from Barony’s revenge for condemning their heroes to die cold and lonely.

  And now? Now that Davo knew he hadn’t long to live, he was ready to cash in on his knowledge.

  What really frosted me was that he’d come to Sparrowhawk.

  Damn the bastard. Had he thought that Papa wouldn’t care about one ship and how it died? Did he think we wouldn’t care? The thought made me grind my teeth in anger.

  “He tried to erase the file,” Archer whispered. “Remember all that time he spent on Duchess’s command deck?”

  I nodded. Time he’d claimed was spent downloading records. “He didn’t want us to find out.” I kept my voice low.

  “Not us,” Archer murmured. “Charity.”

  That made more sense. Davo might not give a damn what we thought, but if he was any kind of a father, he wouldn’t want his daughter to know what he’d done. Even when he was dying, he’d fight to save her opinion of him.

  Well, that was too damn bad. As Papa had reminded me: all debts come due. There was very little justice to be had on a man who was already dying, but I had the power to make him suffer. I’d make sure he’d lose the one thing he valued most—his daughter’s love. I would tell Charity exactly what kind of murderer her father really was, right to Davo’s face, and watch him squirm as her love and respect turned to hate. That would make him suffer. That would give the ghosts of Duchess’s captain and crew their revenge.

  And Charity? She was an innocent, but she would be hurt, too.

  That couldn’t be helped, I decided. The truth had to come out.

  As soon as I could manage it, Davo would pay his debt to the dead.

  An hour later, I was dozing, leaning against Archer’s bony shoulder, when the coms officer perked up. “Squad Leader! I’m getting a hail.”

  The squad leader’s mouth set in a grim line. “Barony militia?”

  “No—no, it’s a civilian vessel, som
ething small.” He listened for a moment, then grinned. “It’s our informant. I guess he caught up with us after all.” He flipped the incoming hail to the coms.

  “Yo, there, Troy cruiser. Stand by to link, I’m coming aboard.”

  My fists clenched. Davo’s voice grated on me like sand in my boot.

  A few minutes later, when the skimmer married her hatch to the cruiser, the Troy crewman opened the hatch to find Davo collapsed on Mudpuppy’s deck, wheezing. Squad Leader Bell grabbed a med kit and dosed him with something, probably a stim, and propped him up against the bulkhead.

  As soon as he could speak, Davo lit into her. “What in burzing hell d’ya think you were doing? I told you, no shooting. My girl was in that cutter.”

  Bell replied frostily, “I don’t take orders from you, Mzee Davo. My orders were to capture the Barony ship. That’s what I did.”

  “Looked to me more like it caught you.” He coughed weakly. “You’d think three cruisers woulda been able to control one derelict. I been chasing you for hours, trying to catch up.”

  She helped him to a chair. “The more urgent question, Mzee Davo, is where we are and how to get us and the derelict back to Troy space. We need a heading.”

  Davo turned his head and caught sight of me and Archer. “You! What’re you doing here? Where’s my girl?”

  “You son of a snake!” My tied hands itched to wring his scrawny neck. “We’re prisoners, thanks to you. You set us up, offered us money to help you salvage the derelict, then led us into an ambush.”

  He didn’t take his eyes off me. “Where’s Charity?”

  “Still on Sparrow. Zub knows she’s better off there than with a bilge rat like you for a father.”

  Bell stepped between us. “The heading, Davo.”

  “Bide a minute, will you!” he snapped. “You got to follow the current anyways for now. In a couple of hours there’ll be a spot to turn off, to circle back to Troy.”

  Squad Leader Bell’s terse nod was, I thought, very restrained under the circumstances.

  “A heading won’t do you any good,” I said. “This little cruiser doesn’t have enough power to drag Grand Duchess to a new course.”

  Davo nodded. “That’s so. Bell, can your crew get the derelict’s engines working?”

  “No. They say the engineering section’s half destroyed. But this prisoner claims that he can operate the maneuvering rockets.”

  Davo peered at Archer. “This boyo’s got the magic touch with engines, it’s true. We’ll need all the help we can get to turn Duchess back.”

  “There’s just one problem,” Archer said. “You’ve done nothing but lie to us. We don’t want to help you.”

  Davo knelt next to me, peering from my face to Archer’s. “This ain’t what I wanted. I didn’t think you’d be on Duchess, honest.”

  He stood to face Bell. “I need a little privacy with these two. I need to ask them a few questions.”

  The squad leader cocked an eyebrow, looking around the cramped cockpit. “Privacy? Where?”

  “Mudpuppy.”

  To my surprise, Bell nodded. “All right, but they stay in restraints.”

  A Troy squaddie marched us through the linkage and parked us on the deck of Mudpuppy’s cargo space, our wrists still bound in front. If I’d been free, I would have been reaching for Davo’s vulnerable bits.

  The soldier must have seen the fire in my eyes. She fingered the grip of her holstered stun pistol. “You want me to stay, Mzee Davo?”

  “Nah, just lend me your stunner.”

  She gave it up with reluctance. “I’ll be at the hatch in case they give trouble.” She backed out the hatch to the cruiser.

  Mudpuppy was basic in the extreme. No cabins, no galley, no amenities. Just a utilitarian craft for short hauls with engines simple enough that the ship could be operated by a single pilot. From what I could see, however, the two-seat cockpit was fully equipped, including a scanner good enough to rival Sparrow’s.

  Davo centered his stunner at a point between my eyes. “Where is it?”

  “Where is what?”

  “Don’t play stupid with me, girlie. The microbial synthreactor. Where is it?”

  I stared at him in confusion. How could he know I’d found the synthreactor on Duchess?

  Play for time. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t test me. Nine months I spent in Barony custody. I know all about torture.”

  He moved the stunner to point at my right foot. A shot from point-blank range would shatter the bones. “Where is it?”

  “Go to hell.” I steeled myself for the pain.

  But it wasn’t me Davo was looking at, it was Archer—soft hearted, puppy-eyed Archer.

  “Don’t shoot!” Archer gabbled in a rush. “We don’t have it anymore. We put it in drones and left them in orbit around a moon to wait for pick up.”

  Oh. That synthreactor.

  I had the wit to shoot a dirty look at Archer.

  He hung his head, practically in tears. “I couldn’t let him hurt you.”

  I faced Davo with a sigh. “I guess we might as well tell you. We brought it to Kriti sector and dropped it for Ordalo to pick up.”

  “Ah. I feared as much.” Davo relaxed a little, pointing his stunner in a neutral direction. “Sorry about the play-acting, but I had to know for sure. I was hoping you hadn’t made delivery yet.”

  “How’d you know we were carrying it?”

  “I got sources. When I heard a ship called Sparrowhawk was carrying in a synthreactor for Ordalo and heard about Ordalo being arrested, I figured it was a bit of luck. Thought if Kwame hadn’t delivered it yet, he might need help finding an outlet for a bit o’ hot merchandise. Figured he’d welcome the advice of an old friend who knew the sector.”

  “Help? You were going to take it for yourself.” The worm was the very definition of slime. “So when you came to us, it wasn’t for help to recover Grand Duchess—it was to hijack our load?”

  He shrugged. “Two birds, right? And I wasn’t going to hijack anything. I just thought it would be worth something to Kwame to have an old friend to help him navigate the markets. Let him know who to trust.”

  Which wouldn’t include Davo.

  “Sure,” I said. “And all that snooping around Sparrow’s holds was just for old time’s sake.”

  “Just being thorough. I know Sparrowhawk’s hidey-holes, thought it’d be worth checking ’em. It’s a pity you already offloaded that synthreactor—we coulda made a lot of money off that item.”

  “Except you didn’t say anything about navigating the markets when you came aboard. You were hoping to find the synthreactor and get it away from us, to sell it on your own.”

  “You didn’t say a lot of things.” Archer’s voice was frosty. “Like you were steering us to Troy and not Barony.”

  Davo relaxed against the bulkhead. “Ah, boyo, there’s some complications, that’s all. I can’t go to Barony, never mind why. They’re a bunch of double dealers anyway. I was always planning to lead you and Duchess to Troy, collect the reward from them. I woulda seen you treated fair. But then you overburned your thrust getting away from the gas giant and passed me by like a bear with her tail on fire.”

  Archer squirmed. “The circuit melted.”

  Davo’s eyes glinted. “Not as smart as you think you are, eh, boyo? I finally caught up to you near that dark star—but then I see Lili waiting offside in that runabout.”

  “So you got scared and ran away,” I said. “And you powered straight to the Troy militia and told them we were coming.”

  “What could I do? The skimmer don’t have the firepower to fight off Nemesis. But I knew Lili’d bring you round this way, trying to get that derelict to Barony. I just nipped up to the Troy outpost to get some help. Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”

  I said dryly, “People do tend to get hurt in an ambush.”

  “What about Charity?” Archer asked. “Did you care that you we
re putting her in danger?”

  “Shouldn’ta been no danger. Lili was bound to cut and run as soon as the Troy militia showed up, I had no doubts on that score. I figured Kojo would do the same, leave the derelict behind and save his own hide, and Charity’s. Once Troy had Grand Duchess, they’d give up the chase.”

  “And what then?” Archer demanded. “Charity loves you! She’s counting on you!”

  “She’ll be all right with Hiram. He’s a decent sort.”

  “Is that what you think? You can leave your daughter on somebody’s doorstep like an unwanted puppy?” Archer’s voice dripped with scorn. “How many times have you left her behind? Broken your promises to her? And she still believes in you! You don’t deserve to be her father.”

  Kind-hearted Archer—rarely had I seen him moved to contempt. But family was what mattered most to him.

  Archer did deserve to be a father, I thought—and a child was something I could never give him.

  “Of course he left Charity behind,” I said, my voice as cold as space. “And us, too, so he wouldn’t have to share the reward. You betrayed us like you betrayed your own crew. Lili told us how you could have saved them by giving up Duchess.”

  His gaze darted away. “I couldn’t help that. There’s reasons, reasons you don’t know, why Duchess can’t go back to Barony.”

  “We know why,” Archer said. “You found Duchess a year ago, while the crew was still alive. If the Barony authorities ever see Duchess’s logs, they’ll know it was you who left them to die in the cold.”

  Davo sucked in a breath. “Ah. I tried to erase that part, but I didn’t have time to finish.”

  “You’re a murderer.” Being so close to the snake made my skin crawl.

  Davo gave a twisted smile. “All right, if you know so much, you might as well know the rest. I’m not the monster you think I am. I left Grand Duchess to die—I make no apologies for that. She’s no science survey ship, she’s a spy ship. If the information she has aboard gets back to Barony, they’ll wipe a whole Troy colony out o’ the stars.”