Darkship Renegades

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  Now that I was married to him, and had the same relatives, surely I was no longer his ward? Only we’d never got around to cancelling the document. Which meant they could now use my action to make Kit’s punishment more severe. Perhaps severe enough to kill him if I overreacted. Which meant, I couldn’t react. At all. I could barely breathe. Kit and I had saved each other from near death more than once. I couldn’t imagine life without him.

  The blond man didn’t even bother to answer the question, just inclined his head and cast me a look. I held myself so immobile my muscles hurt.

  I kept quiet, too. If there had been only one gun pointed at me, I could have tried to make a grab for it. I’m genetically enhanced. When needed, I can move faster and more accurately than any natural human. One gun I could evade. I could overpower the bearer before he knew what hit him.

  But forty armed men and some of them Cats by engineering? No. I could only take out one or two before the rest of them brought me down or worse, brought Kit down.

  Besides, the forty young men holding the guns looked different from Eden’s normal hushers. Hushers were an all-volunteer force, and most of Eden’s young men served a few months or a year in it. Kit, himself, had at fourteen or fifteen. Most of them viewed it as a not-too-exacting social activity, which got rewarded with social approval for their willingness to defend Eden from an invasion that never came. Normally they looked like children at play.

  Not these hushers.

  Straggly and young, dressed in what could be called a uniform only because everyone wore blue, though there was no uniformity in cut or design, wearing all manner of hairstyles and adornment, they still managed to look like a military force.

  It was obvious they would shoot at the least pretext. Or the least excuse. I looked into their gazes and realized they wanted to kill us, and I wondered what had been going on in Eden in our absence to change the young in that way.

  I tightened my fists till my nails bit into my palms. I couldn’t get any mind-words from Kit, only a sense of wariness.

  “If you believe I’m a traitor—” he told the blond man and stopped.

  The blond man smiled wolfishly. “Indeed. We should have eliminated you. But we had to decide quickly. Your com contact was a surprise. We thought you dead. We certainly didn’t imagine you’d landed on Earth. We’ve not had the time to look through all possible implications of your actions and, frankly, your being who you are complicates things. You have relatives amid our most respected and prominent citizens, who might take offense and make trouble if we had shot you out of orbit.”

  “But—” Kit started.

  “So we’ll decide it now,” the blond man said. “And execute you with due formality, if it’s warranted. So no one can doubt it’s proper.”

  Kit opened his mouth. Closed it. Mentally, he told me, Don’t question anything I do.

  I wondered what he meant to do. I trusted him implicitly. Kit knew the customs of the land, and was good at strategy. I prepared to follow his lead. With his speed and reflexes he could overpower any number of his accusers.

  And he said, “I’m surrendering to the authority of the Energy Board,” Kit said.

  I had heard wrong. Either that or there was some deep planning involved. Kit didn’t surrender to the authority of anyone. Then I thought I saw it. He’d get out of the ship, approach Blondie and, as the man let down his guard, take his burner. Then Kit could point the burner at Blondie’s head, hold him hostage and demand a fair hearing.

  I could visualize all this, as Kit came down from the ship, hands in view, held some distance from his body. It was hard stepping down from the ship like that, because the steps—two—were just a little too long for any normal legs.

  Before Kit could recover, Blondie lifted his hand.

  It must have been a prearranged signal. Four young men with Cat eyes detached from the ranks of Hushers and jumped Kit.

  They did it so fast—what Kit called Cat speed—that to me it looked like they disappeared, only to materialize again, holding Kit down on the ground and handcuffing him behind his back.

  I had the impression of movement, too fast for the eye to fully capture, an impression of Kit falling under the impact of four bodies, of his head hitting the floor. His exclamation of surprise, pain, and rage hung in the air, as though the sound hadn’t had time to dissipate in the echoes of the vast room.

  And then all hell broke loose. Something tugged at me, as if the feeling between Kit and me were a taut rope, binding us heart to heart.

  I never thought about it. Never made a decision to attack anyone. Never even made a decision to move. Yet as soon as Kit hit the floor, I was flying through the air.

  My father, in his attempts to subdue me, or perhaps to give me an outlet for that pent-up aggression that worried everyone so much, had enrolled me in various academies which taught self-defense or martial arts. When I escaped Daddy’s authority I’d learned hand-to-hand dirty fighting.

  But for my money, the most useful fighting moves I ever learned came from a ballet camp in Switzerland to which Dad had sent me, apparently under the delusion that dance would tame the savage beast.

  I caught myself mid-air, leaping, in graceful ballet-style, over Kit and his huddled captors and straight at the blond man. The tip of my extended foot hit him mid-chest, and took him down as I landed, I grabbed the burner from his hand before he could react. I pointed it at his head.

  Confusion reigned. In the middle of my beautiful leap, several hushers fired at me, and various others tried to follow me down with burner fire to my destination, only stopping short when they realized that killing me would risk killing their leader also.

  None hit me.

  Like Kit, I had been bioengineered for speed, and while I wasn’t quite as fast as he was—while I couldn’t give the impression of moving so fast I disappeared from one place and materialized in the other—I could and did move too fast for normal human eyes. And Blondie had taken the only four cats in the group—the only four people who were faster than I—and used them to neutralize Kit.

  But that many burners going off in an enclosed space will hit something. I could smell acrid smoke.

  I didn’t look to see where it was coming from. Hushers ran. I heard fabric beating against hard surfaces, and feet stomping and fire retardant spraying. I didn’t turn.

  I stared down at Blondie’s eyes and saw fear and confusion. Whatever he had planned, I’d just made his plan go horribly awry. My late, unlamented father would have told him that I did that to plans.

  “Nav Sinistra—” he started.

  “Stop,” I said. And no, I didn’t care if he was right by the book. He didn’t get to hurt Kit. Right be damned. Kit was mine to love and protect, the same way I was his. Besides, no one absolutely sure of his legal ground would have hurried to grab Kit without warning. I resisted a temptation to hit Blondie on the side of the head with my burner.

  “Stop. I don’t want to hear it.” I barely looked up, keeping most of my attention trained on Blondie, but managing to convey that I was speaking to the four young Cats also. “You, let Cat Sinistra go. Now. Now, or I’ll shoot this man.” I pressed the burner harder against Blondie’s temple as I straddled him, keeping him still.

  “Dear lady,” my captive said. His gaze was calm, his voice composed. “You don’t mean that. You can’t mean that. I know the amount of money your husband owes for the repairs to the ship you damaged last year. If you shoot me, you’ll never be out of debt for the blood geld.”

  He’d just told the young Cats both that he was not afraid and that I was unlikely to shoot. The dirty rotten scoundrel. I’d bet he cheated at chess.

  I swallowed hard. “Right,” I said. “How about I shoot your feet off, then? Then your ankles. Then your knees. I’ll set the burner on high so it cauterizes. No risk of dying and you can regen it. But you won’t get anywhere near a medtech until you let my husband go.”

  I set my foot on his trachea. I could tell from his l
ook that he knew very well I could crush it with just a little downward pressure. Then I pointed my burner at his feet. His eyes showed worry, but he didn’t give an inch. “Dear lady,” he said, still in that soft tone, “what will you do then? Go back into space in the Cathouse? Surely there are easier ways to commit suicide.”

  And I realized we weren’t on Earth. Fine, I knew that. But I hadn’t realized how the differences between the two worlds and their populations changed my calculations. Was it possible to run and hide in Eden? Sure it was. For a while. But unlike on Earth, you could not hide forever.

  Earth is much vaster and has a much larger population. People can move from one place to the other unremarked. No one would even care about their pasts in some places.

  But on Eden there were a limited number of families and everyone seemed at times to be an amateur genealogist.

  And then there was the limited physical space. You couldn’t move that far away.

  Kit and I couldn’t just run and hide.

  We couldn’t assume different names and claim to be from elsewhere altogether. After a while our isolation would stick out. Besides, both of us were famous: Kit because of his first wife’s death, myself for being the only Earther to come to Eden in three hundred years. Someone would spot us within a week. I could feel my jaw setting into what dad called my mulish look—possibly because the old bastard had a sense of humor. “Fine,” I said. “Let my husband go, and replenish the ship, so we can leave.”

  Where we’d go, I didn’t have the slightest idea. Earth, probably. Now there was a planet you could get lost in.

  Blondie looked chagrined and sighed. “Do as she says,” he said. But weirdly, there was an odd gleam of smug triumph in his eyes.

  “No,” Kit said, sitting up. “No.” And then, hurriedly, “I submit to the judgment of Eden.”

  He must have hit his head much harder than I thought. I started to open my mouth to say so, but he was in my mind. Drop it, Thena, he mind-spoke, perfectly clear and far more forcefully than normal.

  I closed my mouth, but managed the mental protest, But—

  You’re playing into their hands, he said. Here they have to keep up appearances. They can’t murder us. If they get us to take off, they can shoot us out of the sky. They’ll be protecting Eden from suspected spies. No one will protest.

  You mean to let them arrest you? I asked, in disbelief. I can’t let them—

  No. I’ll allow them to detain me. They can’t arrest me. They don’t have governmental powers. They don’t have legal powers. They don’t even have traditional powers to do this. I don’t like this any more than you do, Thena, but trust me. My way is the best course.

  TYRANNICAL AUTHORITY

  “I want him to die screaming,” I said. It wasn’t for the first time.

  Katherine—Kath—Denovo gave me a sideways glance, but didn’t comment, because she knew I wasn’t referring to her little brother, but to Blondie.

  Kath had picked me up, in her family flyer, which smelled of candy and had dolls and toy flyers hidden in the crevices of the seats. Right now something was poking at my backside. I suspected it was the outstretched, burner wielding hand of a plastic figurine. I had no clue how many children Kath had, and I suspected that Kit was hazy on it.

  In a culture where most gestation took place in bio wombs, which one could pay professionals to tend, I sometimes suspected the parents themselves forgot exactly how many children they had. I knew Kath’s eldest, a Cat named Waldron, had just got married and started doing powerpod runs. But I suspected a couple of the toddlers that ran around the compound where Kit’s whole family lived—benevolently watched over by his father, Jean—were also hers.

  Kath looked nothing like Kit. This made sense, when you realized he’d been adopted in utero and was no biological relation. Of course, they both had Cat eyes, hers in dark blue. She now lowered her eyelids halfway as she drove unerringly through the confusion of traffic in Eden Center, where flyers crisscrossed at all altitudes and in every possible path.

  I confess that when I’d first come to Eden, I was horrified that they had no traffic regulations at all, no beacons tracking altitude, no enforcement of any kind. Of course, how could they have those when they didn’t have anything resembling authority? But still, I expected that they’d have accidents every three seconds. I’d swear that we barely escaped being smashed into about ten times on any run through Center. But it turned out accidents were very rare. Kit said it was because other people were actively trying not to hit us or be hit by us.

  So, I knew this, mentally. But I couldn’t make my gut believe it. Going through the chaos of Eden Center felt like it should be lethal and I had trouble nerving myself to fly it. But Kath and Kit could do it without even giving it full attention.

  Kath seemed to be deep in thought, though not about driving, something that happened more or less automatically, as her hands tapped lightly on the controls as we dipped and soared. I suppose once you drive a powerpod collection ship through the explosive coils of the powertree ring, driving through Eden is child’s play. “I agree with you,” she said, “on his dying screaming, but perhaps it is actually impossible to strangle a man with that part of his anatomy.” She gave me a sheepish look. “I don’t think it has enough elasticity.”

  I tried to smile, but it wouldn’t quite gel. I made myself clasp my knees, instead of balling my hands into fists, but I suspected my fingers were leaving marks on my knees through the fabric of my pants. “What is his name?” I asked.

  “Who? The president of the Energy Board?” she asked.

  “Is that who Blondie is?”

  A fleeting smile, while she brought us out of the traffic, and took one of the side streets. No. One of the side tunnels, only it didn’t look like it, because the tunnel was broad and showed neatly planted gardens and plots on either side of the road. Each of the gardens and plots would hide an entrance tunnel. Eden’s houses were always dug down or into the raw rock of the asteroid, from the tunnels that served as streets. Made logical sense, in an environment where rain and leakage were no danger.

  Above, the stone was masked by a convincing holographic rendition of a sky with fluffy clouds. It turned out humans reacted better to that than to being enclosed in rock. “I like Blondie as a name for him, though it might give the impression he’ll be easy to defeat. He won’t. There’s poured dimatough under the patrician good looks.”

  “I gathered,” I said drily.

  “His name is Fergus Castaneda,” Kath said. “And his family have been members of the Energy Board for as long as Eden has been Eden, though usually in minor positions. He’s the first Castaneda to be president of the board.”

  I absorbed this. It made a certain sense. Perhaps his resemblance to Caesar wasn’t simply external. When you ask why people do things and your only answer is “money,” you miss that more people want power than money. To many people, power is an aphrodisiac that money could never be. In fact, to many, if not most people, money is a way to power, not the other way around.

  “I still want him to die screaming,” I said, sullenly.

  “But only after he screams a long, long time,” Kath agreed dreamily. She drove down the street, turned into another street, which brought us to the profuse and spacious garden that covered the Denovo compound.

  This idea of gardens covering the entire plot, with the house underneath, had puzzled me when I’d first come to Eden. It shouldn’t have. Underground houses have never quite taken on Earth for two reasons: first, because humans prefer natural light if they can get it; and second, because even with the most high-tech materials, it was truly impossible to make anything underground completely proof against the inevitable leaks. Construction on Earth was, ultimately, bound by the dictum that water flows downhill.

  On Eden, water didn’t flow anywhere unless you paid for it to flow. Everything was underground—or everything above ground, however you chose to look at it—since everyone lived inside an asteroid and
sunlight could be piped in anywhere. That meant that everyone lived at various levels. There was no reason to have the house at street level. So, most people didn’t. They burrowed under the plot—real estate contracts were for cubic space, not linear—and left a garden or a pasture or an orchard above.

  We opened the door artfully concealed by rose bushes and went down a staircase enclosed in walls with niches, where fragrant plants grew. Entering the Denovo house involved going through a riot of smells, a symphony of perfume. Most of the time, just coming home made me feel better. Not this time.

  Despite what Kit had said, about this being the safest alternative, it didn’t make it a safe alternative. He’d never said he’d be perfectly fine. That was because he couldn’t be sure, and my darling hated to lie.

  It all felt wrong. I loved the Denovos, who had taken me into their family as if it were perfectly normal for one’s son to bring home barely controlled human wrecking balls born and raised on Earth. But they were Kit’s family before they were mine. And he should be here with me, when I came back. The fact he wasn’t was at least partly my fault.

  At the end of the entrance tunnel opened a small hall, which led into a much larger hall. The Denovo compound didn’t look like any normal house on Earth. It was closer to a public park—with an even carpet of grass underneath, plants everywhere, and even the occasional statue. Though they had sofas and chairs in other rooms, in the public areas people mostly flopped down to the grass floor, children and adults alike, reclining to eat or to work. Little robots I called “turtles” roamed around picking any object left out of place and cleaning it or returning it to where it was supposed to be.

  I was never sure that what was underfoot was really grass. It felt like it: cool, soft and alive. I was sure on the alive part, because Kit had once made a comment that any crumbs dropped or even skin cells sloughed off would get eaten by the floor covering. But, unlike grass, the carpet didn’t seem to grow on dirt, but on some cushiony surface that gave and adapted under one’s weight. And it never needed mowing.