Ghost Ship

by Kathryn Hoff

  “And now you’re worried about him?”

  “He takes pills by the handful and gets woozy sometimes. He tells me not to worry, but…”

  I patted her hand. “Better take him to a med center when we get to Barony.”

  My father had told me not to worry, too. Davo might be a liar, but if he cared enough about Charity to try to make things easier for her, then he wasn’t all bad.

  She threw the comb down. “There. It’s done. What do you think?”

  I peered into the hand mirror, turning to see the sides. “It’s different.” Two fat braids, each two fingers wide, arced back from my temples to the back, where they joined to form a short queue. “I like the way it keeps my frizz calmed down.” But with my hair pulled back, the Gav slope of my brow was more obvious, and my Terran ears stuck out like flaps. With the forehead stitches and my bruised eyes, I looked like a mother’s nightmare.

  “Of course it’s different. That’s the point. It’ll be easier to take care of this way, and you won’t have to braid it again for a month.”

  A month? She seemed so proud, I thanked her profusely while wondering how offended she’d be if I took it all out immediately.

  I placed my blue beret carefully over the braids. Maybe if I spilled something noxious on my head…

  “Zub’s horns.” Kojo leaned on the salon’s door frame. “What’d you do to your hair? Call all hands—it’s time to make a plan.”

  For once, Kojo yielded the seat at the head of the salon’s table to Archer.

  “I’ve made a rough estimate of Grand Duchess’s mass and orbit,” Archer said. “Her orbit’s decaying. She might last a few more weeks, but then she’ll start to dip into Shipkiller’s atmosphere and be crushed. If anyone’s going to salvage her, they’ll have to do it soon.”

  Hiram harrumphed. “If you’re talking about taking Sparrow down to the derelict’s orbit and grappling her out…I ain’t eager to join Duchess in that death spiral.”

  “Sparrowhawk’s thrusters can push us out of orbit, even that low,” Kojo said. “The problem is that even if we ran our thrusters on full bore, Sparrow wouldn’t have enough power to pull Duchess away from the planet. If Grand Duchess is going to survive, she’ll need to do it under her own power. We’ll have to get inside and get her engines working.”

  From the couch, Davo muttered, “Told you that.”

  Archer waggled a hand. “Maybe we can save Duchess, maybe not. I won’t know till I see her engines.”

  Archer’s twitching was unnaturally subdued—head still, only one ankle flexing. What was wrong with him? Some germ he’d picked up on Kriti? Maybe I’d run him through a med scan after the meeting.

  “You mean you’re going to board her?” Charity asked, eyes round. “A ship full of dead folk?”

  “That’s the plan,” Kojo said. “Hiram, drop down to Duchess’s orbit so we can grapple on. Try to line up Sparrow’s cargo airlock to Duchess’s portside hatch—that should be pretty near her engineering section. Davo, you’ve got more experience with Barony ships—you can suit up and go with me to work out how to open her hatch and power her airlock. Patch, have a few power mods ready to bring over to the derelict—and, um, better give Archer a hand.”

  I glanced at Archer. “With what?”

  Archer raised his head with much less than his usual bounciness. “With the enviro suit. I’ve never actually gone out into space before.”

  He looked sick all right—with fear.

  CHAPTER 12

  Linking up

  Down Sparrowhawk went, spiraling into a tighter, faster orbit around Shipkiller. The planet loomed huge in our viewscreens, our ship’s puny lights reflecting off the layers of toxic murk below.

  Hiram kept up a tense monologue into the com as we sped closer to atmo. “Course three-one by five-oh. More push, lad, mind the balance. A touch starboard, one-seven. Good. I can see Duchess, coming up behind us. A mite more acceleration to match her speed…”

  In the engine room, Kojo managed the propulsion, accelerating us to Duchess’s gravity-driven velocity, while Archer applied his artistry to the maneuvering rockets to fine-tune our approach.

  My station was the cargo hold, manning the grapplers to marry our ship to the derelict. Latching onto a space station or another ship wasn’t unusual for Sparrowhawk. Doing it at breakneck speed while sailing dangerously close to atmo was something I’d have preferred to avoid.

  My concentration wasn’t helped by Davo, sitting on a crate in his underwear while preparing to don his enviro suit.

  “…I recall the first time I ever came by here, pure accident, mind you, and I come across a Selkid flitter. The vessel was ancient, in perfect condition, musta been caught here for centuries. Pulled her out and sold her to a collector…”

  Below us, the flat tops of the gas clouds seemed close enough to touch. The sunlight glinted off them, bloodred.

  Duchess came into the viewer range, gradually eclipsing my view of the planet. Four times Sparrow’s mass, Grand Duchess spun slowly under us, her observation turrets empty, her hatches tightly shut.

  As her command deck rotated into view, through her canopy I dimly saw figures standing at their stations.

  Surely they couldn’t be still alive?

  With a muttered curse, Hiram broadcast on the hailer: “Grand Duchess, this is cutter Sparrowhawk, rescue and salvage, preparing to board. Anybody alive on there?”

  Davo hit the com. “What’s the matter, you old fool? You expecting an answer?”

  “Shut up, Davo,” I snapped. “And stay off the com.”

  My hands were sweaty with tension as Sparrow’s starboard side gradually approached the derelict.

  “Archer, cut propulsion,” I ordered. “I can see the aft hatch now. Move zeta a touch. A touch more, now starboard to close. Deploying grap—” Bang. “Uh, that’s close enough. Grapplers deployed, stand down.”

  I took a deep breath. We were safely linked in orbit now, the grapplers holding Sparrow to Duchess’s port side, separated by a span no wider than two strides—except that we wouldn’t be striding the distance, we’d be leaping through cold space.

  Kojo and Archer joined us in the hold.

  “Sorry about the bump,” Archer said. “The grav pellets skewed the approach.”

  “No worries,” Kojo said. “Just think of it as knocking on Duchess’s door. If there was anyone still alive in there, they would have heard that. Davo, get that suit on.” He began to pull on his own enviro suit.

  “Why does Daddy have to go over there?” Charity stood at the door, hands on hips.

  Damn. That girl had a habit of sneaking up on a person.

  “Because I’m captain of Sparrowhawk and in command of this mission,” Kojo snapped. More calmly, he added, “It’s a basic safety rule, Charity. Nobody goes into a space environment alone, not ever. I need Davo with me because he’s familiar with Barony ships.”

  “’S all right, girl,” Davo said. “I’d kind of like to see her insides. I want you in the wheelhouse with Hiram, monitoring the coms and keeping an eye open. You tell us quick if there’s anything we need to know about.”

  Her lip came out. “All right, but, Kojo, you be careful with him.”

  As Charity headed for the aft steps, Kojo said, “Patch, you and Archer suit up, but don’t come over until I give the all-clear. Bring those power mods with you.”

  “Right.”

  As Kojo and Davo entered the airlock and began the decompression cycle, Archer watched silently, one hand trembling.

  I brought a suit over. “Here, I’ll help you with the fastenings. You’ve really never been in space before? No weightless training?”

  “We did a sim in school once. I threw up.” Stripped down to tight leggings and vest, he looked skinnier than ever.

  “Micrograv takes some getting used to.”

  “Thanks.” He pulled on the suit with difficulty. Twitchy was Archer’s normal state, but he was shaking like a leaf in the wind.
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  “This isn’t what I thought it would be,” he said. “I thought we’d grapple the derelict and power out with her. I didn’t think we’d have to board her.”

  “Now who’s afraid of ghosts?” I sealed his seams and double-checked them.

  “I’m not afraid…” Archer swallowed. “All right, I’m not real comfortable going into a ship that’s full of dead people.”

  I handed him his helmet. “A few corpses are nothing to worry about, leave the dead people to me. You and Kojo just see what you can do about restoring power to the dead engines.” I began to strip down to undergarments.

  Archer paused, helmet in hand. “Patch, the other day…I heard what Kojo said, about you tricking me into getting married. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.” He took a breath. “I think maybe we shouldn’t be married anymore.”

  I froze in the act of drawing on my suit. I’d hoped he hadn’t overheard that bit. “Archer, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? That’s all you can say?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I involved you in my problems. I’m sorry I married you under false pretenses. I’m sorry I lied.”

  Tears pricked my eyes. Kojo had apologized to me, too, dozens of times, and I still hadn’t really forgiven him. Would Archer ever forgive me?

  He turned away, fiddling with his boots. “Had a good laugh over it, did you?”

  “No! It wasn’t funny then, and it isn’t funny now. At the time, I really needed help. I might still need it.”

  He risked a peek at my face and seemed reassured by my serious expression. “The truth?”

  I nodded. “If you want to hear it.”

  He faced me, arms crossed, prepared to judge.

  My best friend, and I’d risked every shred of his respect by hiding the facts.

  “I should have told you from the beginning. It wasn’t the Cartel agent I was worried about. Yes, he’s free with his flippers, but I can handle him. The problem was money. After Papa died, we were in debt, bad. Kojo thought he’d found a way to pay off what we owed, but it backfired and we were worse off than ever. He had to agree to carry Ordalo’s ‘special commission.’ We were stuck with the synthreactor and we had to smuggle it past all the checkpoints to deliver it to Ordalo in Kriti. And to make sure we didn’t steal the synthreactor and sell it ourselves, we had to put up Sparrowhawk as collateral…and…”

  I paused, feeling the flush rise on my face. I was still almost too ashamed to admit the last part. “And indentures. Ordalo was holding indentures over me and Kojo. Three years’ servitude to the Selkid syndicate, for both of us if we didn’t deliver.”

  Archer’s mouth dropped open. “That’s horrible!”

  “I didn’t know any of this until after we were underway to Kriti. I panicked. Getting married was…Selkids sell off their unmarried sisters and daughters all the time, but under Selkid law, a married woman can’t be indentured without her husband’s consent. I thought, if the worst happened, you would never let the Selkids have me.”

  “You’re damn right I wouldn’t.” His feet shuffled, the enviro suit’s boots stifling their jitters. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why make up that story about a lecherous Cartel agent?”

  I realized I was rubbing my fingers in a Gav gesture of stress, a habit I’d worked hard to break. “In part, because Kojo’s your captain. I didn’t want to undermine your respect for him.”

  Archer made a rude noise with his lips. “He doesn’t deserve respect. He put you in danger. He’s a bilge rat.”

  “He was trying to fix things, but it all fell apart.” No need to go into the fact that Kojo had lied to me for weeks about it and forged my imprints. “What’s done is done. He’s still the captain, so don’t think about doing something stupid.”

  “You said that was part of the reason. What’s the rest? The truth, please.”

  I bit my lip to keep the tears at bay. “You know my mother was a slave?”

  He nodded.

  “I was a slave, too, until Papa took me away. You don’t…” I swallowed. “You can’t know what it’s like, to grow up like that. The idea that I might ever go back to being under someone’s absolute control again…It was too terrible to think about. I felt so humiliated. I didn’t want you to see me like that. Not you.”

  “Not me,” Archer softly repeated.

  He hugged himself, rocking lightly back and forth.

  Over the months we’d worked together, I’d learned to gauge Archer’s mood by his jitters and jerks. Happiness, sorrow, anger—I could read them by the staccato twitches of his hands and feet. But rocking while hugging himself? I had no idea how to read that.

  “Archer, say something.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “So you do like me, then?”

  I laughed, wiping my eyes. “Of course I do. You’re my best friend.”

  He brightened. “Good. And now that you’ve delivered the synthreactor, you’re safe.”

  “Ah, well, not exactly.” I found that my fingers were twining again and forced them apart. “The releases are in escrow. They’ll be registered in a few weeks unless something happens.”

  Archer leaned over to peer into my face. “Like what? What could happen?”

  “Oh, you know.” I waved a hand. “War, disaster. Or Ordalo or his gang find the tag the Settlement Authority placed on the goods and they come after us, looking for blood.”

  Archer rocked. “Then I guess we’d better stay married.”

  “No.”

  He looked up, hurt all over his face.

  “Archer, I married you to protect myself. That was selfish. It was wrong. Unless Ordalo talks his way out of jail and the synthreactor makes its way to wherever that illegal terraforming site is, the deal Kojo and I made with the Settlement Authority is off and they’ll press the smuggling charges. I might end up on the run or in prison. Worse—if things go bad with Ordalo, Kojo and I might have to go into hiding from him, too. Either way, being tied to me is bad for you. You should file the divorce, the first port we get to. I’d do it myself if I weren’t worried about being arrested.”

  Archer cocked his head, an unreadable expression on his face.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  CHAPTER 13

  Death and Grand Duchess

  Kojo’s voice came through the helmet mic. “Patch, Archer? Airlock’s clear. We’re inside Duchess. It’s cold as space here. No grav, no lights, air pressure very low. We need those mods. Come on through.”

  I handed Archer one of my knit caps, a red one.

  “Here. There’s nothing worse than getting hair in your face when you’ve got a helmet on and can’t push it out of your eyes.” Well, there were worse things, but I decided not to mention those.

  “Hmm.” He eyed my neat braids. “Maybe I should…”

  “No.” Although the braids were a lot easier to manage than a headful of bushy curls.

  Pulling my own purple cap over my braids and the skin seal that still decorated my forehead, I pushed Archer into the airlock, stacked in four power mods, and sealed Sparrow’s internal hatch behind us. The airlock, normally used for delivery and pickup of cargo drones in space, was tight quarters for the two of us, not to mention four power mods. Good thing Archer was so skinny.

  Hair tucked in, helmets on, I checked to make sure Archer’s suit was sealed before beginning the decompression cycle. “Com check?”

  “Com’s working,” Charity replied. “Daddy, is that you, huffing and puffing?”

  “Nah, darling. Must be one o’ them hotshots from Sparrowhawk.”

  I punched the button on Archer’s glove to switch his com to helmet-to-helmet. No reason for Archer’s heavy breathing to be broadcast to the ship. At the rate he was using the oxy mix, he’d be out of breathable air in far less than the four hours the canister was rated for.

  As the airlock depressurized, I clipped tethers to each of the mods and added one to join Archer to me.

  I spoke into the helmet mic.
“I’ll go first and open the hatch on Duchess. Don’t jump, just let me pull you over. Once you leave Sparrow’s airlock, you won’t have grav, so remember: tiny movements.”

  “Tiny moves, got it.” Archer’s teeth were chattering, although the suit’s temperature controls were working fine.

  When decomp was complete, I opened Sparrow’s cargo hatch. We faced the cold of space and, a short leap away, Duchess’s hull. Two of the grappling struts arced above us, the third below and forward. Between the hatches stretched an anchor line, and nearby floated the power cable that fed power from Sparrowhawk into Duchess’s airlock mechanism.

  Above and below, forward and aft, the empty blackness of space.

  I clipped my tether to the anchor line, and with a tiny push, launched myself to the other ship.

  As I floated slowly across, my eyes were drawn right. From between the ships, the planet’s clouded face seemed close enough to touch.

  I reached Duchess’s hatch and grasped the grab bar to quiet my bounce.

  “Decompressing airlock.” I glanced back at Archer, perched on the edge of Sparrow’s hatch, the tether floating between us.

  “I can come over on my own, you know,” he said.

  “No, wait…”

  Too late.

  Archer pushed off as if he was leaping a puddle on his home planet. He shot toward me, much too fast.

  I pivoted into his path. As his body slammed into mine, I relaxed, cushioning his smashing arrival.

  “Whoa—aaah!” His arms flailed like a windmill as he bounced back toward Sparrow.

  “What’s wrong? What’s happening?” Kojo demanded.

  “Nothing,” I answered. “Just a missed step. Archer, just relax. Go limp. Try to slow your breathing.”

  Archer hit Sparrow, backside first. Spinning, he tried to grab. Missed.

  He bounced, upward this time. I held tight to the grab bar.

  The tether between us stretched out. “Patch?”