by Kathryn Hoff
“You mean the bodies?” I shrugged. “Sure. Probably frozen where they fell.”
Charity bit her lip. “I’d druther not board a ship full of dead people.”
“Same here.” Archer bobbed his head.
“We’re just going to tow the derelict,” I said. “There’s no reason to disturb the remains. Besides, they’re just corpses—nothing to be afraid of. I thought Terrans didn’t believe in spirits.”
“I don’t!” Charity said. “Well, not much.”
“Patch does,” Archer said. “She sees ghosts all the time.”
I glared: maybe he wanted to impress a pretty girl, but he didn’t have to tell a near-stranger about my family spirits.
Charity’s eyes widened to the size of hundred-sov coins. “Is this ship haunted? What do they do? Make noises? Throw stuff around?”
I blinked at her. “Throw stuff? Make noise? Why would they?”
“That’s what ghosts do, isn’t it? Moan and cry and move things around when no one’s looking?”
Zub’s beard, what nonsense! But then, Terrans had a lot of strange customs surrounding death.
“Maybe Terran ghosts do those things,” I said. “Gav spirits don’t. They’re just family members, taking an interest.”
Charity nodded sagely, twirling her long braid. “Gav ghosts. That must be why your gravity’s so screwy.”
Silly girl. I cocked my brow at Archer. “You said Terrans don’t believe in ghosts. You said spirit sightings had a rational explanation.”
“We don’t. They do. Ghost stories are just stories. Fairy tales.”
“My granny used to tell ghost stories,” Charity said. “Scary ones. Lovers who died of a broken heart hanging around, searching for their sweethearts. Or murdered souls seeking revenge.” She rubbed her arms and shivered.
I shook my head. “There’s nothing to worry about from a dead toll enforcer. The crew won’t be grieving lovers or murder victims, just militia who died in the course of duty. And they won’t have any grudge against us—we’re coming to take them home.”
“Be sure and tell them that,” Archer said. He and Charity exchanged a smile.
It was annoying. They thought I was silly to believe in spirits, while they were nervous about a handful of harmless carcasses.
“I ran into a ghost once,” Charity said. She dropped her voice so we had to lean closer to hear her. “I was just a sprout. Mama sent me to collect some carinda berries from the far side of the electronics bins. I was always happy to do that, ’cause I’d stuff myself with berries while I filled the pail. The only problem was I had to pass right by the petro pits, where the fires never go out. You had to be careful around there—my brother told me that one time some kid went too close and fell through and burned up. He warned me never to stray near the fires, because the kid’s ghost would reach out and snatch me, to have somebody to play with.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Spirits don’t kidnap the living.”
Charity sniffed. “’Course they don’t. I’m just tellin’ you what my brother said. You gonna listen or not? Now, goin’ to the berry bushes was fine, ’cause it was full daylight. But comin’ back, night was falling, and my brother’s tales were a-weighin’ on my mind. So I skirts the petrol pits, trying to see where I was stepping, so no ghostly hand would reach out and snatch me. And as I’m walking, I hear something behind me, going skritch, skritch.”
Archer had stopped eating. He watched Charity, his eyes shining, a tiny smile on his lips. He was actually enjoying this nonsense.
“I turns around and calls out, ‘Who’s there?’ But all’s quiet.” She mimed peering into the night. “I look hard into the dark and smoke, but I don’t see a living soul. So I turns back toward home, walking a little faster. And behind me, I hear, skritch, skritch, skritch.”
She looked over her shoulder as if she were still checking for the ghost. “Well, now I know somebody’s following me—but when I looks, the sound stops and I don’t see nothin’ but fire and smoke. I just knew it must be that poor boy’s ghost, reaching for me, trying to take me down to the petro pits so he’ll have someone to play with. So I begins to run, run as fast as I can. And as I’m running, I hears skritch-skritch-skritch-skritch-skritch right behind me! All the way home I run, with the ghost followin’ me the whole way. I throws open the back door and runs to my mama’s arms, cryin’ and beggin’ her to save me from the ghost.”
Charity sat up. Archer was grinning now, as if he knew how the story would end.
“Did your mother tell you the ghost wouldn’t harm you?” I asked. That’s what my mother would have done, with a stern lecture about showing more respect for the spirits.
“Better than that,” Charity said. “Once she made out why I was so upset, she didn’t say a word. She just picks up my berry pail and swings it, just a little. An’ every time it swung back and forth, it let out a little skritch, skritch. I’d let my own berry pail chase me all the way home.”
Archer laughed. “There’s always a rational explanation.”
Archer’s skepticism was another reason why Archer and I weren’t suited to each other.
“Why did you run?” I asked. “If Terrans don’t believe in spirits, why were you afraid? And if you do believe in spirits, why would you imagine a child’s spirit would harm you? Or could harm you? After all, spirits don’t have bodies—that’s what…”
Charity shook her head. “You just don’t get it.”
I turned back to the console. “I think it’s Terrans who don’t get it. Spirits aren’t harmful, but they deserve respect, just like your own grandparents while they’re alive.”
Archer touched my hand. “Sorry, Patch. We don’t mean any disrespect to your beliefs. It was a cute story, that’s all. My family used to tell ghost stories, too, on long nights.”
“Tell us one of your stories, Patch,” Charity said. “I mean, if you’ve really seen a ghost.”
“If you promise to be respectful, I’ll tell you about the first time I saw a spirit aboard Sparrowhawk.”
Charity nodded solemnly, waving a hand over her chest in some gesture I took to be a promise.
“All right.” I let Archer take over the engine consoles. “I was eight years old. I’d left my mother the year before, to come aboard Sparrowhawk to sail with my father.” No need to go into my mother’s tearful goodbye, the midnight escape, the bribed guards, my father carrying me over his shoulder wrapped in a blanket. Mother’s clan had punished her harshly, demoting her from house slave to a menial job in a noxious factory.
“That particular night, we were sailing through the star corridors, so it was quiet and peaceful. I was asleep in my cabin, all alone, when I heard my mother’s voice, calling my name.”
Charity’s eyes were shining. “Was it spooky, like moaning?”
“No, it was just her voice, like she was right beside me. I opened my eyes and saw her, standing next to my bunk.”
“Was she dressed in white sheets?”
“White sheets? Of course not. She was wearing her ordinary house clothes.”
For some reason, Charity seemed disappointed. “Oh. Well, what did she say?”
“Nothing. She just smiled at me, then she was gone.”
“That’s it? That’s not much of a story.”
“That’s how I knew she’d died,” I explained. “Papa got a message from her clan sister about it a few weeks later, but I already knew. It softened my grief, seeing her at peace, and knowing she was still looking after me.”
Archer put a skinny arm around my shoulder. “That’s a sweet story,” he said. “Your mom must have loved you a lot.”
Charity sniffed. “My story’s better.”
“My story’s true.”
I thrust the bowls and spoons into Charity’s hands. “Here—you promised to clean the dishes.”
When she was gone, Archer’s eyes were full of reproach. “You should be nicer to her. Charity’s just a kid. Probably away from ho
me for the first time, and you’re making her do the dishes.”
“She’s not a paying passenger—she should earn her keep. And you should be careful what you say about the spirits.”
From the engine room, I went to the cargo hold to crate up Archer’s latest artwork—a concoction of dagger-like harrow teeth he’d welded onto a crankshaft to create a coatrack.
I looked at it critically. It was artistic, the way the harrow blades seemed to grow out of the crankshaft like twigs from a branch. More blades at the bottom made a sturdy, root-like stand. On one of the spiny coat hooks, Archer had laser-etched a fingernail-sized glyph of a barb hitting a target.
I imagined the Saipan dealer pointing out the glyph to some central-sector art collector. See? An original Archer. One of a kind. Expensive, but worth it. It will be worth a fortune in a few years.
Grinning at the thought, I rounded the battens at the back of the hold to look for crating—and ran into Davo.
“What are you doing here?” I could have sworn the hold’s door was locked.
“Just poking around,” he said. “Kwame used to keep a bottle or two of the good brandy down here.” The pilfering bastard didn’t even bother to look sheepish.
“Only crew are allowed in the holds,” I said. “Sparrowhawk crew.”
Davo settled onto a bale of thistledown as if I’d invited him to take a seat. “Is this what you’re hauling these days? Ag bales and scrap metal? Kwame would blush for shame.”
“Captain Davo—”
“Why, your hold’s half-empty. And look at the dust! A good captain would never let his ship get into such shape.”
Through gritted teeth, I said, “Kojo’s doing just fine as captain, and our cargo’s none of your business.” Thistledown did make a lot of dust—I’d been planning to clean the air filters again—but that was no reason to criticize Kojo.
Davo cocked an eyebrow at me. “It’s funny. Kojo’s got Kwame’s looks, but you’ve got his savvy, don’t you, girl? I could see that straight off. You’re wasted, tooling around in a moth-eaten old tub, hauling two-dracham loads of odds and ends from one backwater port to another.”
“Unlike you,” I said, sizzling at the insult to Sparrowhawk. “With your bare-bones skimmer filled with—now, what was it? Oh, yeah—nothing.”
“That’s temporary, girlie. A bit of bad luck.”
“That’s what losers always say.”
“Where’s home for you, then, girlie? Some backside-of-nowhere Terran colony?” He raised bushy eyebrows. “Or maybe Gavora? Maybe you still owe allegiance to the gorillas?”
If the miserable old bilge rat weren’t a friend of Hiram’s, if we weren’t expecting a big payoff from the bastard, I would have picked him up by his scruffy neck, thrown him into his fleabag skimmer, and left him in our wake.
“Sparrowhawk’s my home. Now get out of my cargo hold before I throw you out.”
“My, touchy, ain’t ya?” He rose and stretched leisurely. “Come of not having a true home, somewhere you’re proud to be from.”
I took a step toward him.
“I’m going,” he said. “But if you want something better out of life…”
“Out!”
He sauntered away as if he were a paying passenger.
Damn the man. What had he been doing in our hold?
First thing, I changed the lock on the cargo hold door from a convenient three-digit code to six digits. Then, I checked the panel that hid access to a secret space behind a false bulkhead. Papa and Hiram had built the cache before I’d joined the ship—if Davo had sailed with Papa, it was likely he knew about it.
At the moment, a thistledown bale as tall as me was lashed to battens blocking the panel. But my suspicions were correct: scuffmarks in the fine thistle-dust on the deck proved that Davo had been snooping around that particular bulkhead.
Davo. Maybe he’d been a friend to Papa and Hiram, but he wasn’t a friend to me. He obviously wasn’t above thieving a bit of stray merchandise, even from his partners.
Burzing crook. The cache happened to be empty at the moment, but on the long trip to Kriti, it had hidden the intricate core of Ordalo’s synthreactor.
CHAPTER 8
A shadow in the Gloom
After another day of sailing, our tandem ships reached the chop of the Ribbon Road, and Hiram yielded the helm to Davo. Charity and Kojo crowded into the wheelhouse with them, eagerly watching Davo navigate the Road’s twisting currents, Charity asking a hundred questions.
I was left on my own in the cargo hold to ready a fleet of light locator buoys. Once we edged off the Road into the Gloom, I’d drop them like breadcrumbs to mark our route.
To kill time, I reran the scanner readings from just before Mudpuppy’s linkup. How had Davo snuck up on us?
I reran the readings three times before I spotted it—radiation static that wasn’t quite as random as it should be, but random enough to mask the signature of a tiny ship approaching on drift after a single, brief propulsion burst. That was a cute trick.
The weird thing was I was picking up a strangely similar nonrandom bit of static behind us, popping in and out of focus as Sparrow wound her way along the Ribbon Road. It might be nothing, but it might be a small ship using irregular spates of propulsion to disguise her approach.
I called the wheelhouse. “Kojo? Check the scanner. We’ve got company—and it’s somebody using tools from Davo’s toolbox.”
“Damnit,” Davo shouted into the com. “Some burzing freebooter’s trying to horn in on my find. Change to heading eight-three by oh-seven—let’s shake off those buzzards.”
Sparrowhawk pitched to starboard, lifting me out of my seat before the grav adjusted. The com rang with Davo’s commands from the wheelhouse to the engine room. More speed, bank to zenith, trim that aft rocket.
“I need help,” Archer shouted back. “The skimmer’s skewing the load in this current. You don’t need three pilots in the wheelhouse, do you?”
Kojo came streaking down the aft steps, pausing on his way to the engine room to tell me to have the locator buoys ready.
“Already lined up,” I answered, but he’d already disappeared into the passage.
I kept an eye on the scanner. It was hard to tell, but…yes, the odd radiation blip was still following us.
A hard turn to port—my stomach flipped as the grav generator adjusted, far too slowly for my taste. The scanner flashed frantic warnings as Sparrow’s course began to diverge from the relative safety of the Ribbon Road.
A moon loomed ahead, a grav hazard that the Road’s markers warned ships to avoid. Davo sailed us near enough that we could see every fissure and crater—near enough that its gravity bent our course.
As soon as Sparrow was behind the moon, I launched the first buoy out the cargo hold airlock. A single ping, then I silenced it so only a coded hail from Sparrow would get a response. We wanted no one following our trail.
After positioning the next buoy in the airlock, ready to launch in an hour’s time, I checked the scanner. Aside from the grav spikes for the moon and the gaseous planet it orbited, the scanner was empty.
Too empty. We were off the Ribbon Road, sailing the Gloom beyond the reach of any beacon that could guide our ship to safe harbor, beyond the official warnings about known hazards.
I felt a flutter of panic. We were on our own, dependent on our scanners alone. One small ship caught in the darkness and currents of the Gloom.
Well, not quite on our own. The ship following us had dropped its staticky camouflage to reveal a runabout not much bigger than Davo’s skimmer.
With a sinking stomach, I told myself it couldn’t be Ordalo’s vengeful friends tracking us. Not yet anyway—they wouldn’t have had time to retrieve the synthreactor yet or to discover its locator tag.
I ducked down the passage to the engine room, where Kojo was keeping an eye on power usage while Archer balanced the propulsion. “Do either of you recognize the configuration of that ship?”
“Burzing pirates,” Kojo swore. He hit the com node to call the wheelhouse. “You owe money to somebody, Davo? That ship behind us must be very determined to follow us off the Road.”
“Some claim jumper,” Davo growled back. “I warned you to be careful. Don’t worry, we’ll lose her in the thicket.”
I raised an eyebrow at Kojo. The thicket?
He shook his head. “Don’t ask me, this is Davo’s show.”
The scanner’s emptiness made me nervous. I was used to seeing a busy screen with charted hazards. Above all, I yearned for the steady pulsing of the beacons that marked the safe passage lanes through the ether. Instead, the screen showed little except the blip of the runabout, following our trail.
And a shadow up ahead, a dense debris field.
“You’d better strap in, folks,” Davo called on the com. “And stay sharp in the engine room. We’ll be doing some fancy tacking.”
“Patch, we’ll need some fresh power mods,” Archer said.
“I’m on it.”
I loaded the two spent mods onto the handcart’s flatbed and rushed the cart to the cold storage hold. One, two, I shoved the mods into recharge bays to await a time when we could spread our ion collectors. Two fully charged mods loaded onto the cart, and I was on my way back toward the engine room.
I was halfway there when Sparrowhawk swooped toward zenith. For a moment, my limbs felt like lead. Then the grav generator kicked in with a thump that left me dizzy.
Davo’s voice came from the com. “Damn, you folks need to upgrade that burzing grav gen. Ready escape thrusters, quarter bore, one-second thrust.”
Escape thrusters! Was he out of his mind?
“Patch? Get those mods in here!” Kojo popped into the passage to pull the handcart into the engine room.
Sparrow swerved starboard, knocking one of the mods off the handcart’s bed.
“I got it.” I pushed the mod into the nearest open power bay. The consoles pinged with the directions from the helm to divert thrust to the maneuvering rockets.