Darkship Thieves

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  You know, a touch.

  Touch? What is a touch?

  I sent him a mental image. There was a momentary silence. The collector carefully encircled the powerpod and started closing—a fiddly operation, if you didn't want to detonate the pod.

  You have a very dirty mind, woman. How did I marry such a low minded wench?

  Well, you got the right length, did you not?

  Indeed, he said, as he started to pull the powerpod—our third of the run—home to our storage bay. I should hope I have the width too. Or are you complaining?

  Which is when I saw the flash out of the corner of my eyes. I had time to mind-send, I think there's something, starboard, three clicks, but—

  And then light erupted, a flash of unbearable brightness, bright enough to blind me.

  Shit, Kit said in my mind.

  And then a wave of heat, like the uncovered mouth of a hellish furnace hit me. And I lost consciousness.

  I don't know how long I was out, but I came to with Kit in my mind. Not talking to me, exactly, just swearing up a blue storm. It started with Shit, ran up the scale of all the standard swear words, and then to an eerie silence.

  I heard him moving around . . . wherever I was. It didn't seem to be the nav cabin. Or if it was, something had happened to me, because I was horizontal, on my back.

  I assumed the person moving around was Kit. The presence felt like Kit's. There was a rustle of cloth and the sound of breathing, and then again, the low swearing, this time mind and voice, "Shit, shit, shit."

  I tried to open my eyes. They wouldn't open. Or at least, the light didn't change. I tried to speak, but my mouth hurt. And then I became aware that everything hurt—my whole body. It hurt at such a high level, so uniformly, that my brain had refused to recognize it as pain, and my self had gone somewhere, away, far away.

  Kit, Kit, it hurts. And it's dark.

  For a moment he didn't say anything. Then came a deep breath. "Hold up, Princess, hold up."

  Gentle, gentle hands touched my neck and then something pointy and cold made me shiver. It felt like the tip of an injector. "Painkiller," he said. "It should start feeling better soon." He made a sound like a hiccup. Maybe a sob.

  I felt the bed shift with his sitting on it. Bed. We were on the bed, then. I hadn't been on the bed when . . . What happened? What was that?

  "Tractor ray. Slammed into our collector claws, and then smashed pod into side of ship." He took a noisy breath, that might have been another sob. "It . . . burst. Right under your . . . right under the navigator cabin. I was looking the other way. Otherwise . . . blinded."

  The pod. The heat and light. Radiation. I'd been radiation-burned. If the ship was undamaged—and it might be, the dimatough and ceramite Eden used was much tougher than anything on Earth—it would still be radiation-hot. All of it. And I . . . How bad is it? How bad did I get hit?

  "Bad." I heard him rummage through something. There was a sound like containers being slammed together, papers rustling. Something beeped, then again, urgently. Kit gasped.

  The pain was going away—not being removed, exactly, but receding to some place far away. It left my brain able to work. That type of blast. That strong . . . Tell me, damn you! How bad?

  He made a sound that I couldn't interpret. It might have been annoyance or a sob or something. And then he said, "Hold up. Hold up, okay. Wait. I'm trying to get a read on the med-examiner. Something is wrong."

  Of course something was wrong. He was trying to get a read on severe radiation burn and poisoning with an instrument that was designed to diagnose and prescribe treatment for minor aches and sprains and perhaps the common cold. If I could have lifted my arms without screaming in pain, I would have smacked the side of his head. Christopher Bartolomeu Sinistra! You know better than that! I'm radiation-burned. From the feel of it, badly burned. There is nothing in our medkit that will help.

  "It's not irreparable. A couple of weeks of regen and . . ."

  Which shows how my beloved was functioning. A couple of weeks of regen might solve the problem—it depended on how many of my internal organs I'd managed to cook—but a couple of weeks of regen was months away in Eden. And if I was so burned I couldn't see and everything hurt, I wasn't going to make it to Eden alive. It feels like my entire skin area is burned, I said. He didn't answer. And my eyes are gone. Kit, do you have your radiation suit on? I must be emitting radiation too! As I spoke, I tried to reach for his mind, to commandeer his eyes. He pushed me back.

  Can you see, Kit? Are you blinded?

  No. I'm fine. Closed my eyes in time.

  Let me see.

  "No. Yes. I'm wearing the radiation suit." He took a deep, shaky breath. "There must be something we can do. I refuse to . . . I refuse to . . . You can't die like this."

  I pushed again, past his resistence and his bewildered pain, past his defenses and his panic. I pushed and pushed, and he gave in, and I got to look . . . out of his eyes.

  Everything looked different. I'd known that. The virulent colors looked muted pastel to him. Tasteful really.

  But no amount of different vision could make me look other than what I was. If I'd been a roast, I might have looked attractive. As it was, my skin was a burnt, brownish mess, cracked in places, and mingled with the melted remnants of the dress I'd been wearing. My hair was a dark mass, best not investigated. My eyes were indeed gone.

  I pulled back from Kit's eyes.

  I took a deep breath that brought twinges of pain despite the painkiller. Kit, you know what to do. You have a burner. There is nothing else you can do for me.

  "No," he said, then like an incantation. "No. There must be something. I must be able to do something. I must. You can't die, Thena! You can't."

  Words from Shakespeare ran through my head on the subject of all of us being born to die. But I couldn't have told him that, not if I tried. The truth of the matter is, when it comes to matters of any importance poets are bloody useless.

  Listen, lover, listen. I knew I was calm by virtue of the painkiller. I knew if the painkiller started wearing off it would only get worse, much worse. If he didn't have the courage to do what must be done, I would die slowly. You can't live long with your skin that burned. It was good. It was better than I could have imagined. I never expected love, you see, and I got to have it. Maybe I didn't even deserve it. But we took a gamble, and we lost, and there's nothing we can do now. Nothing. You must get the burner. You must put me down.

  And then I thought if he was here, the Cathouse was adrift in the powertrees. Adrift on automatic pilot. Any minute now, he'd hit another powerpod and it would all be over for both of us. Put me down and get out of here, Kit. Get out of here fast, before you crash or they board you.

  He didn't answer. Not with words. But from his mind came a storm of emotions. Fear for me, and almost unbearable grief, and then, rising, growing, a steady drumbeat of Not again, not again, not again. I'll do as she says, and then I'll kill myself, I'll do as she says and then I'll put myself out of my misery. Not again, not again, not again.

  Kit, no. You must go back to Eden. You must go back and . . . Take my body? In storage. Have me cremated. Put my ashes in the rose garden atop the compound. By the white roses . . . Like . . .

  But he wasn't listening. He was running. I wasn't quite in his mind, but I wasn't quite out.

  I could feel him panting, running. I could feel him in the cat cabin, rummaging, finding the burner. I could feel the handle of the burner, made of smooth dimatough, cool and heavy in his hand.

  He was walking. He was walking back, slower, in measured steps. But the rhythms in his mind remained the same, the frenzied certainty that he must kill me then himself.

  I felt him near the bed. I felt the tip of his fingers touch my hand. Oh damn, he said in my mind. Perhaps there is . . . destiny?

  No destiny. Don't be an idiot, Kit. I must die. I'm already dead. But I want to know you will go on. I want to know you'll live.

  A choked sob
answered me. Why? What's the point? It's not like I'm going to have children to live after me. It's not like there's any point to me. Just another Mule—a dead end, going nowhere. I can die now, or I can live alone hundreds of years. What difference does it make?

  It makes a difference to me. I tried to push the idea at him, the feel of how much I loved him. It makes a difference to anyone who hears you play the violin. And Kit, there's more than one way to reproduce. You can have children, just not of your body. You can make them, mold them, see them grow. Find . . . find someone to raise them with. Name a daughter after me. I wasn't sure what I was saying anymore. I just wanted to convince him life had value. I was sure if he just got past the grief, he'd see it too. Your parents love you. Doc Bartolomeu loves you. I felt the tip of the burner, cool against my temple. The thought in his mind was that he would fire like that because he must make sure that he killed me with the first shot. I heard him swallowing. I could feel him steeling himself for the shot.

  Goodbye lover, I said. Thank you. I'm so glad I didn't garrotte you.

  The burner dropped. A ragged sob answered me, then his voice, "I can't, can't, can't. Can't."

  You have to!

  But he wasn't listening. He was straightening himself up. I heard him walk out, calmly. I didn't think he was abandoning me. He had made a decision, but what decision? Damn fool man. Didn't he know he was in shock and couldn't be trusted to decide anything?

  A part of my mind followed him. I couldn't quite see through his eyes, but I could follow. He was going around the ramp to the cat cabin. I felt him pushing the switch that erased all maps, and then the switch of the intercom, cool against his fingers, felt him flick it on.

  It was ridiculous. Even if another Eden ship were nearby to be hailed, it wasn't likely to have a regen tank in its hold, any more than we did.

  But he flicked that switch on and spoke into the com in his best, decisive voice. "Christopher Bartolomeu Sinistra, piloting the Cathouse on behalf of the Eden Board of Energy. I have an emergency aboard and I demand aid."

  Of whom do you demand aid, you fool? I asked. There is no one!

  But as he repeated the message again, there was a loud crackle and then, "Circum Terra. What is an Eden Board of Energy?"

  And Kit, clearly, calmly, though his mind was one large, confused sob, said, "I believe you call us darkship thieves." There was even a hint of amusement to his tone.

  For a moment only silence answered, and then a voice said. "Did you say Sinistra?"

  "Yes. I must request rescue for my wife, Patrician Athena Hera Sinistra."

  "Ath—" a series of crackles followed, and then a different voice came on.

  "Mister . . . ah . . . Sinistra. Did you say you have Athena Hera Sinistra aboard, and that she needs rescue?" Daddy Dearest's voice sounded healthy and possibly even happy.

  "Yes. My wife, Athena Hera Sinistra, was burned by an exploding powerpod and she needs immediate first aid and extensive regen."

  A deep breath from the other side was audible through the com. "Well, well, well. So . . . What are your conditions?"

  Tell him he has to let you go after you deliver me. Arrange some means he doesn't set foot in the Cathouse. They'll kill you, Kit, if they see you. You must—

  I might as well have been talking to a wall. My husband, wonderful, ridiculous, loving, stupid man that he was, answered bravely and foolishly, "None, so long as you save Thena."

  Thirty-Six

  I woke up. The first sentence in my mind was Damn it, Kit. Doc Bartolomeu told you not be a hero. I'm telling.

  There was no answer from his mind, and the feeling that he was nearby had disappeared.

  My call of Kit! went unanswered, even as I became aware of my surroundings. I was lying on something soft, but it didn't feel like the yielding and accommodating bio-bed Kit and I shared in Eden or the other bio-bed we shared in the Cathouse. In fact, it felt very much like a mattress on Earth—soft, but not at body temperature and not molding to me in the way only a bioed thing could.

  I had binds on my wrists, binds across my middle. Something—a tube?—was down my throat, taped to the sides of my mouth. Something else obscured my eyes, or at least when I opened them I saw nothing but darkness.

  Memory rushed upon me. The coup in my father's space cruiser, Eden, Kit, the Cathouse. A moment of brief panic whispered that it had all been a dream. I'd just had one of my many accidents with the brooms. I was in a hospital, recovering. Everything else was hallucination.

  The cloying, disinfectant smell of the hospital seemed to confirm this. A dream. A delusion. Not true. My mind refused to accept it. It couldn't be a dream. It just couldn't. I could have dreamed the darkships; I could even have dreamed Kit as I'd first met him. I could never have dreamed Kit as I'd come to know him—as a person who would love me unconditionally, who would accept the fractured confused person I knew myself to be. That, I could never have dreamed.

  So Kit existed, and the whole episode had been true. Where did that leave me?

  It left me here, in a hospital bed, strapped down as a mentally unstable patient, with a tube—presumably with nutrients—shoved down my throat and with no ability to defend myself. And no idea where my husband was.

  The silly idiot. The gallant fool. What did he think he'd earn giving himself up to Earth? What except death? Did he think he would be on hand to defend me from whatever threatened me?

  I knew that was exactly what he thought and dreaded his misguided belief. But one thing I dreaded more.

  If I had been brought into this hospital to recover from severe burns, and if I was now struggling towards full consciousness, it must have been two weeks, perhaps a month, since Kit had surrendered himself and the Cathouse—not only endangering himself but betraying Eden's trust in its pilots—in an attempt to save me.

  The chances that Kit was still alive were very low. There were laws on Earth, after all, that dictated the death of anyone bioed away from human genome standard.

  They wouldn't be able to see most of his modifications. He could hide the fact that he was a Mule. But his hair and his eyes could not be hidden, and would be obvious. And besides, my father had been there. And I failed to see how my father would not want Kit dead, if nothing else, to hide the fact that I'd married what he'd consider a monstrosity.

  For a moment I felt as though I'd sink into the mattress, as though my loss and grief would overwhelm all. At the same time boiling rage bubbled up, smoldering, from depths I didn't even know I had possessed.

  I had been angry before. In fact, many people, including those who had tried in vain to mold me into the perfect Patrician's daughter, would claim that anger was my abiding problem. But I'd never been this angry at so many people.

  I smoldered with rage at my father—who was almost certainly still alive and whose role in all this I couldn't even begin to understand. I burned with fury at myself for not having prevented Kit from coming back to danger; I felt strong annoyance at my husband's stupid chivalry—but most of all I longed to punish Earth. All of it. Land-states and dead zones, protectorates and Seacities. Them and their stupid laws. Ever since the turmoils, they'd banned an entire type of people, an entire class of bio-improvements, and for what? Were we any better than we'd been? So the Mules had been inconsiderate, perhaps violent. They'd not taken into account the will of the people they governed.

  The Good Men weren't any better, and like the Mules, they had no more than a tenuous connection to the people they governed. They were just a few families, lording it over the mass of mankind for whom they didn't care any more than the Mules ever had.

  My fury at Earth could have consumed the planet in a giant conflagration.

  Correction, would consume the planet in a giant conflagration.

  I made sure not to move in any way that could be interpreted as my being awake, as I listened for any noises indicating people in the room. I heard a heavy step to my left, almost certainly a male foot. From the right came softer sounds—
as if produced by someone smaller—and a tinkle of glass or ceramite, as though the somebody were manipulating a tray full of objects, medicines or perhaps surgical implements.

  "I still don't understand," the voice from my left said, speaking in a low rumble that confirmed my suspicions of its gender. "Why they have us here, guarding her, with weapons. She's just a little girl."

  The person on the right didn't say anything for a while, and when she spoke, it was in a sort of soft, concerned tone. "I don't understand it, either, but they tell me she is very dangerous. And besides, I don't think they'd order us to guard the daughter of a Good Man if that weren't true." She sounded dubious even as she said it.

  Oh, good. I liked it when I took my guards by surprise. Gently, carefully, so deliberately that I didn't seem to be doing it and could stop at any moment, I started testing both the firmness of the bind around my wrist and the tightness of it.

  The bad news was that it was indeed tight. The good news, that it was made of tensile, non-rigid material, like most of the binds put on you in hospitals, where they were, after all, afraid you might damage yourself with an unconscious movement. This meant if I worked slowly, if I worked carefully, I could free that hand. Which, of course, would make it much easier for me to free myself of all the other binds.

  If there was one thing I couldn't stand, it was to be tied down and blindfolded. Someone was going to die a horribly messy death for this.

  I thought of Kit tying me in the Cathouse and tenderness fueled my rage. Kit, wherever you are, I'm going to avenge you.

  I was pulling, slowly, steadily at my hand, loosening the bind, when I heard a response. Thena? Thena!

  For a moment I wasn't sure I had heard it. It was that faint. But I seized onto it and mind-shouted in the direction of his perceived thought. Kit?

  This time the response was a little stronger. Light. Bright. Pain. Nausea. Thena? Alive?

  Oh, I am very much alive. And I'm coming for you.

  Yes. The one word. So unlike Kit, and yet bearing in it Kit's personality and a curious sense of despair. And then there was something that sounded like a mental scream, like the mind-voice equivalent of a spasm of pain.