by Kathryn Hoff
Archer looked on anxiously. “Work fast.”
The scanner displayed a fuzz of unnamed obstacles.
“Done,” I said. “Strap in. I’ll secure the…”
“Hard to nadir. Fire thrusters.”
The deck fell out from under me as Sparrow swooped downward. I fell upward, still holding onto the handcart. It and I bounced on the ceiling.
Directly over Kojo’s head.
Archer yelled, “Patch!”
Still in the air, I twisted and pulled the handcart to me just as the grav generator, addled by the grav pellets scattered through the ship, kicked in.
The handcart and I fell together, not onto Kojo or the unforgiving deck, but sideways into the power bays.
My head slammed back, hard. The cart crashed down, missing me by inches.
But then it bounced.
I rolled, trying to get out of its path. Too late.
The cart’s cargo bed crunched into my middle, exploding the breath out of me.
The handcart’s curved handle, so comfortably worn with years of service, arced downward onto my head.
CHAPTER 9
Hard knocks
Somehow, I was resting on something soft instead of the engine room’s cold deck. An angelic face hovered over me.
If this is the afterlife, why do I hurt so bad?
“Your head must be harder than a neutron star,” Charity said. “For damn sure you’re heavy as one.”
Not the afterlife then, just the salon’s tatty couch. The handcart, dented and battered, showed how I’d got there—wheeled through the ship like a spent jump cell.
“Argh, I hurt everywhere.” My head ached abominably. My breath hitched every time an inhale moved my battered ribs. Deep bruises scored my arms and legs.
I wiggled my fingers and toes. Good, no broken bones.
With a grunt, I tried raising my head—not so good. Colors washed away to gray until I lay down again and took some careful breaths.
“You know,” Charity said, “you oughta fix that grav gen. Somebody could get seriously hurt.”
“Yeah, thanks for the advice. Tell me it worked—did we lose that shadow?”
“’Course we did. My daddy knows more tricks than a dog has fleas.”
Archer peeked into the salon. “You’re awake! Hell, Patch, you gave me a scare. I thought that handcart was going to smash you flat.”
Kojo, leaning in the doorway, nodded. “It would have, too. Thank Archer for doing a quick flick with the rockets—you only got a glancing blow.”
“That was fast thinking, Archer. What did you do, shift the stabilizers?”
Archer nodded, wringing his hands. “I tried to twist Sparrow’s orientation so the cart would miss Kojo and you both, but the grav pellets…I about had a heart attack when I saw the handle bounce toward your head.”
“It’s all right, my head’s pretty hard.” This time I made it to a sitting position, although I had to bite back a wave of nausea.
Charity said, “Here, have a toffee. It might help you feel better.” She offered me a bit of sugary candy—from the box that Archer had given me.
“Kojo gave me a whole box. Wasn’t that sweet of him?” She beamed Kojo a smile as bright as a beacon.
I looked from the half-empty box to Archer’s face—and saw surprise turn to disappointment. Did he think I’d given away his gift?
“Sweet,” Archer murmured. “I have to go.” He disappeared into the passage.
Damn. Even when I was unconscious, I managed to hurt Archer’s feelings.
I shot a look at Kojo, but a reckoning would have to wait. “How long have I been out?”
“A couple of hours,” Charity said, “snoring like a busted thruster.”
“Hours?” Alarmed, I turned to Kojo. “The locators?”
His shoulders slumped. “Between dodging debris in Davo’s ‘thicket’ and looking after you, we didn’t drop any. The only way we’re getting out of the Gloom is if Davo can get us out.”
Charity positioned another cold pack over my midriff. “You bled like a river—it got all over your jacket. Where’s your vinegar? I’ll try to wash it out.”
“Use Prestoclean, under the sink.” I closed my eyes, wishing she would go away—but Kojo had blessed her with his sweetest smile when he asked her to look after me, and she’d said, Certainly, Captain, as demure as a cooing dove.
So I was stuck.
“Vinegar’s better,” she sniffed, stepping into the narrow galley at the side of the salon. “My mama says plain old vinegar works as well as any of those fancy products, and don’t cost hardly anything.” She banged a half-dozen lockers in the galley open and shut before finding the cleaner exactly where I’d said it was, under the sink.
“I like the way everything’s put away in your kitchen, kept all tidy,” she called. “I guess you have to do that if your gravity’s in such a bad state, don’t you?”
I grunted in response. Archer was right—she must have been away from home for the first time if she didn’t understand why everything aboard ship needed to be stowed.
Scrubbing noises came from the galley. “Still, you could do a lot to make things more homey, if you wanted. New curtains wouldn’t cost much. An’ a few throw pillows to match. You got everything in beige, but a little color would really brighten the place up.”
I let her prattle on, feeling like the bottom of an old boot. Every happy chirp from Charity grated on my nerves. I felt like a grumpy, frumpy granny, ready to scold a child for laughing too loud.
I should have been grateful. Charity had looked after me while Archer and Kojo powered us out of Davo’s thicket and even stitched up my forehead while I was unconscious. She was scrubbing my blood out of my favorite jacket, all the while smiling and full of amusing anecdotes about her barely-getting-by family. She was even right about the throw pillows and the salon’s dingy colors. For all I knew, she might be right about the vinegar.
But all I could think about was how much I wished she’d shut up and leave me alone.
I closed my eyes, pretending to sleep, trying to ignore yet another tale of some brother or cousin’s injury that her mama had cured with mud or something. My head hurt, my body hurt, and I didn’t want her in my ship.
That thought brought me up short. Why was I so resentful? She was a nice girl, needing a friend, trying to be helpful. She talked too much—well, so did Archer, especially when he was yammering about ships and engines, but I didn’t mind him talking. She didn’t know anything about sailing—but most of our passengers didn’t know anything, and I didn’t have the urge to snap at them the way I wanted to snap at Charity. Her father was somebody I didn’t trust—but that wasn’t a reflection on her, and for that matter, I didn’t trust most people I did business with. She was…
She was sweet and friendly and beautiful.
And I wasn’t.
Was I really so insecure? Was I really letting Charity bring out my worst side just because she made me feel unattractive?
When I’d lived among Gavs, the other children had tittered at my big Terran nose, my prominent Terran ears and my shaggy “fuzzhead” hair. When I’d come to live among Terrans, I’d run crying to Papa when someone taunted me as “gorilla girl” or “monkey face.”
You’re a bridge between races, he’d told me. When someone treats you bad, remember: it’s the ones who step on a bridge who need it most.
And here was a Terran girl, chatty and helpful and treating me like family, and I was caught up in resenting her for how she looked? Papa would be ashamed of me.
I heard her tiptoe closer, and the blanket was drawn up over my shoulder.
I grabbed her hand, making her jump.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for looking after me. What else does your mama clean with vinegar?”
Hours later, after a nap and learning more than I cared to know about low-tech cleaning products, I was still stuck on the salon couch, swathed in cold compresses, tucked up in bl
ankets, aching and bored silly.
The salon’s viewscreen displayed only depressing black. The Gloom’s dense ether sucked up every photon from the nearby star systems and from all the galaxies beyond. We might as well have been sailing in a sea of ink inside a cave.
The scanner was no help, either. Oh, it pointed out the odd asteroid, but without coordinates, they were no good for pathfinding.
Sparrow chugged along, making occasional course changes in accordance with Davo’s fancy. Hiram stayed with him on the command deck. From time to time, I could hear them, telling jokes and swapping lies.
Well, good for them. Davo wasn’t to my taste, but he and Hiram had a lot in common: memories of the old days and years of adventures skirting the Gloom. It made me wonder how badly Hiram had missed having someone his own age to talk to since Papa had died.
Kojo and Charity wandered down the passage outside the salon, laughing and chatting on their way down the aft steps. I imagined them with Archer, looking over his artwork, speculating on who would buy it, maybe even suggesting interesting touches. She and Archer seemed to have a lot in common, too. They were both from large Terran families—why did Terrans think they had to breed like rabbits?—they shared a love of chatter, and they were equally skeptical about spiritual matters. Maybe, with Charity around, Archer would stop badgering me for a “real” marriage. That would solve one problem for me.
For some reason, the thought of Archer and Charity alone together made me restless.
In the meantime, I was stuck on the salon couch, under strict orders from Kojo, Charity, and everyone else to stay there. For the first time since I’d come aboard Sparrowhawk as a child, I was lonely in my own ship.
To hell with that.
I got up slowly, leaning on the bulkhead. At every step I paused to let the dizziness clear.
First, down the passage to the head. The mirror over the sink showed a face that would frighten small children and fainthearted adults. A knot the size of a baby’s fist decorated my left temple—my Neanderthal brow ridge might well have saved my life. Purple bruises decorated both eyes. A swollen, jagged cut on my forehead had been closed with six of Charity’s inexpert stitches. She’d been right about the bleeding—my orange curls were sticky with it, my blue undervest was blotched in brown.
I didn’t feel up to a shower, but I cleaned up as best as I could in the sink. Sponging the clots out of my hair, I wished, not for the first time, my hair was soft and neat and orderly instead of a wiry tangle.
Slightly cleaner, I made my way down the aft steps to my ’tween-decks cabin. Creeping down the steps, clinging to the rails with both hands, made me feel like a burglar.
With some difficulty and a lot of protest from my bruised ribs, I pulled on fresh clothes. There—still a fright, but a less bloody one. My bunk looked inviting, but I craved company more than sleep.
Kojo manned the engine room console while Archer snoozed in the engineer’s cubby. Even in sleep, he twitched like Tinker dreaming of bilge mice. If ever we were a couple, I’d insist on separate beds.
“You shouldn’t be up,” Kojo said, his voice a low shout over the engines’ rumble. “How’s your headache?”
“Dandy.” I eased into the second chair. “What’s our position?”
Kojo glanced at the scanner, depressingly empty of identifiable landmarks. “Zub knows. I thought sure Davo had some locators out here, but I swear, I spent hours with him in the wheelhouse, and he never so much as pinged for a buoy. He really does fly on instinct.”
“Maybe we can use the scanner records to back out if we have to.”
He shook his head. “We’re following some sort of current—I suppose it’s the same one that swept the Barony enforcer to wherever it is now. If we fight the current to go back the same way, we’ll end up like it—lost and power-starved. Once we pick up the derelict, we’ll have to trust Davo to lead us to some outgoing path—one that doesn’t end with us smeared on a planet.”
The throbbing of the propulsion was making my head hurt worse. “You shouldn’t have taken that box of candy for Charity.”
“Why not? She’s a nice girl, I just thought I’d welcome her aboard.”
“She is a nice girl, and you’re twelve years older than her. You mess with her and Davo will carve you to bits. Hiram will probably help him.”
“Ah, you’re daft. I’m just being friendly, like a cousin or uncle or something.”
“Besides, the candy was mine. You should’ve asked.”
He fiddled with the propulsion balance. “It was in the galley—I figured you meant it for everyone. You don’t even like sweets.”
I leaned closer, glancing at the sleeping lump in the cubby. “It was a gift from Archer. Now he probably thinks I gave it away so you could impress an underage wannabe pilot. I don’t want you screwing up my friendship with Archer.”
Kojo snorted. “Don’t worry, you’re managing that just fine on your own. I told you that tricking him into getting married was a stupid idea.”
“I wouldn’t have had to get married if you hadn’t been gambling.”
I regretted those words the moment they were out of my mouth.
Kojo whipped around, his face scrunched in fury. “How many times do I have to say I’m sorry? I made a mistake, trying to get this old tub out of debt. If you’re going to keep throwing it in my face, we can end this partnership right now.”
“If you two are going to fight,” Archer said, stretching, “please do it somewhere else. I already had to clean blood off the deck once today.”
Damn. I hoped Archer hadn’t overheard much.
Kojo closed his eyes. “Sorry, Archer. I didn’t mean to wake you. Patch, go get some rest. You look like hell.”
I did sleep again, almost a full day. Afterward I felt better, the heavy achiness from my battle with the handcart having subsided. The bruises on my body had ripened to plum and bore a strong resemblance to a map of the Ivor mountain range. A skin seal covered the scabbed-over stitches on my forehead. My ribs were still sore enough to discourage deep breaths and cozy hugs—not that anyone was offering.
Charity continued to be helpful and cheerful, passing out meals and spending her spare hours in the wheelhouse with her dad. Davo’s presence was turning out to be unexpectedly useful: not only was he company for Hiram, but he could pilot while Hiram slept, freeing Kojo to cover for my shifts in the engine room while I recovered.
The viewscreens still showed unrelieved black, boring enough to trick the eyes into illusions. In the depths of the Gloom, amid so few reference points, we had no way of knowing how swiftly the current was carrying us. It didn’t feel fast. Even the swirls of ether were swept along with us, so that we seemed to be barely traveling at all.
But on the second day after leaving the Ribbon Road, the viewscreen brightened with the fiery light of a red giant star. Old enough to have burned through the fuel in its core, the star’s interior had collapsed under its own mass, generating heat to the point where the star’s outer layer, burning with a devastating brightness, had swelled past the orbits of its closest planets.
“Prepare for some bumps,” Davo called from the com. “This is where we step off the current. That red star’s got just one planet, a big gasser. That’s where the derelict’s in orbit.”
Despite my tender ribs, I crowded into the wheelhouse with Davo, Hiram, and Kojo, eager to catch a glimpse of the ghost ship.
Sparrow rattled and shuddered as Davo guided her out of the ether current’s smooth, fast channel into the eddies at the current’s edge. The sun shield snapped over the canopy as the red sun’s glare grew too bright to bear.
Sparrow looped to put our stern to the sun and face the planet, a massive gas giant whose deadly clouds glowed orange in the reflected light. The turbulence smoothed as we entered the relative safety of orbit, but the gravimeter buzzed with a warning.
“Stay well away, Hiram,” Davo said. “I call that ball o’ gas ‘Shipkiller.’ The currents her
eabouts sweep everything toward this system, and Shipkiller’s gravity scoops up anything that comes near. If you don’t keep your head or you don’t have enough power, it’ll catch you and drag you down.”
“Put us into high orbit around the planet,” Kojo said. “We can rest our engines while we locate the derelict and figure out how to approach her.”
It occurred to me that the Barony toll enforcer would have done the same. Swept off the Road into an ether current outside the range of any guiding beacon, the enforcer might have spent days trying to fight the current, wasting its power modules. As its power waned, a star system—any star system—would have been a welcome sight. The captain would have ordered the vessel to go into orbit around Shipkiller, taking stock, recharging power in the red giant’s weak ion wind, running distress hails and praying someone would come looking for them.
How long had they held out? Had they held on to hope to the end, gasping thinning air until the cold took them? Or had they, as Hiram had once urged Papa, opened the hatches and brought a faster, easier end?
A hail sounded throughout Sparrowhawk.
“This is Barony expeditionary vessel Grand Duchess, in distress. To anyone hearing this message, please assist us.”
CHAPTER 10
Shipkiller
The automated distress call repeated. “This is Barony expeditionary vessel Grand Duchess, in distress. To anyone…”
Kojo slapped the hailer, muting the call in mid-plea. Jaw clenched, he turned to Davo. “Expedition vessel? What the hell? You said you’d found a toll enforcer.”
Davo grinned like he’d done something clever. “Did you really think I’d bring you all the way out here for some little patrol vessel? Grand Duchess is the pride of the Barony science fleet. Salvaging her—that’s worth fifty thou.”
“She’s still broadcasting,” I said. “Maybe there’s someone still alive on her.”
Davo’s bushy brows raised. “Alive? Nah, she’s froze solid. Went missing just over a year ago—made a big splash in the Barony news feeds. The crew musta hooked their last power mods to the distress beacon. Brave souls.” Davo cast his gaze piously upward. “She’s been repeating that call ever since, and nobody to hear her but ol’ Davo.”