Ghost Ship

by Kathryn Hoff

  “We don’t have any evidence it came from Troy territory. Without evidence, who would believe us? We’ve already been caught once with a synthreactor—if we have another on us when they confiscate the ship…”

  He slumped again. “They’ll double the sentence.”

  There were things I should be thinking of, things that might be salvaged. Making sure Hiram and Archer and Charity were safe, selling the cargo—but I couldn’t make my brain work. It was like the Gloom had invaded my mind, leaving me lost in the dark.

  “Damn!” Kojo pounded his fist against the bulkhead. “If we were anywhere else, I’d say ditch the transponder, make a run for it, hide out on some backward world doing ferry flights. But here? Kriti, Barony, Troy—all of them know who we are, and all of them would love to see us fall.”

  “Nowhere to run to.”

  Three years in prison. And then? No ship, no money, a criminal record.

  I tried to force my brain to function. “We shouldn’t drag Archer and Hiram into this. We can drop them somewhere with all the assets we have left and give ourselves up on Kriti. And Charity.” Poor kid, two apprenticeships coming to an abrupt end within a few days.

  “Correction,” Kojo said. “We can drop Archer and Hiram and Charity and you somewhere. I’ll give myself up, take all the blame. Archer was right, this is my fault.”

  In shock, I checked to see if Kojo was joking. His face was pale, his mouth drawn and grim. It had cost him to make that offer.

  I blinked back tears. “That’s a nice gesture, but the ship’s in my name. That makes me responsible, too. We’ll have to face it together.”

  “Crap. For a minute I thought I was doing something noble.”

  Kojo heaved himself off the bunk. “I’ll go break the news to the crew.”

  I held his sleeve for a moment. “Let me talk to Archer. I owe it to him to tell him myself.”

  When I got to the engine room, Archer grabbed me and gave me a hearty kiss.

  I scrubbed my lips on my sleeve. “What’s that for?”

  He looked over his shoulder as if someone might be hiding among the consoles. “For being kind to Charity. Making her an apprentice and keeping quiet about her father being a murderous rat. I like having her aboard.”

  Archer and Charity? Why not? His good heart and common sense might be just what she needed. All the more since her apprenticeship and Archer’s job were about to be terminated. And unlike me, she could give him the family he always wanted.

  I took a deep breath. “She won’t be aboard for long. Ordalo and his buyer were killed before leading the Settlement Authority to the terraforming site. That means our deal with the Authority is off. Our probation’s been revoked. The Patrol’s already sent a demand to turn ourselves in and there’s a confiscate-on-sight bulletin out on Sparrowhawk.”

  Archer went completely still: no tapping feet, no jiggling body, no wagging hands. He just stared at me.

  “We’ll find someplace to set down with you and Hiram and Charity,” I said. “We’ll leave the three of you with all the money we can spare and the cargo, to make the best out of it you can. Oh, and the divorce papers. You’ll want to file them as soon as possible.”

  Still no movement from Archer. I guess the loss of his Terran fairy-tale ending was too much for him.

  The console pinged with a request from helm. Since Archer was still a statue, I moved to the controls and balanced the propulsion myself.

  My hands moved automatically over blurred gauges. I sniffed and blinked to keep the tears from falling.

  Focus. Try not to think of yourself. Think of how lost Archer will be, so far from home without me to look after him.

  “I’m sorry to leave you with all the trouble,” I said. “The grav pellets won’t be too hard to unload—you’ll just have to be patient. Hang out at the docks with a cask or two and price it a little under what the dealers are asking for. The thistledown will be harder, but maybe you can find a freighter willing to take it in trade for passage somewhere. Oh, and your artwork. You’ll want to get that to the dealer in Saipan.”

  I’d never get to see Archer hailed as an artistic genius. I’d never have the fun of getting the better of a Saipan thistle-trader.

  Archer finally stirred. “I thought when the escrow agent filed the releases…you were free. We drank a toast.”

  “Free from Ordalo. Free from Kojo’s debt and the indentures. But the Settlement Authority said they’d drop the smuggling charge only after they followed the tagged synthreactor to the terraforming site. But now that the Kriti garda has the synthreactor, that’s not going to happen.”

  “Yes, it will,” Archer said. “That synthreactor is too valuable to rot in some evidence room. Sooner or later, some corrupt cop in the garda will sneak it out and sell it.”

  I shrugged. “You’re probably right, but I’ll be in prison by then.”

  “Prison?”

  “Only three years, Kojo says.” Three years of slavery. I struggled to swallow, choking on the words. “That won’t be so bad.”

  Archer grabbed my shoulders and turned me to face him.

  His eyes burned with intensity. In a rough voice he said, “Patch…”

  I patted his shoulder. “Don’t be upset. I’m not the woman for you. Someday you’ll find someone who won’t let you down. Someone you can raise a family with.”

  “Shut up, you ninny. An illegal terraforming site that needs a synthreactor. That’s all we need, right? If you give the Settlement Authority the location of one, they’ll let you go.”

  Broken-hearted and space-addled? I squinted at him, wondering what he was getting at. “Probably, but I don’t know where Ordalo’s buyer…”

  “Forget Ordalo and his burzing buyer. Grand Duchess found Troy’s terraforming operation, right?”

  The console pinged, and I turned to tweak the maneuvering rockets. “I don’t see how that helps us. We don’t know where it is. You saw how long the Ribbon Road is—the site could be anywhere within scanner range of it. Whatever specific information the survey found was lost when I blew out Duchess’s science section.”

  “Yeah. You put on a spectacular show. But you only blew out the consoles. I’d already copied the data, even before we pulled Duchess out of orbit.”

  I blinked. “You did? Why? Davo was supposed to be copying the records…”

  “Davo said he was trying to save the survey data, but he spent his time on the command deck, trying to erase evidence he’d come across Duchess while the crew was still alive. Meanwhile, I’d pulled the data from the survey consoles just in case we weren’t able to save Duchess. All that information is stored in my datacon right now.”

  Why did I always seem to forget how smart Archer was?

  I risked a smile—maybe half a smile. “You sneaky devil. You let me make that grand gesture, blowing up the consoles, and you never said a word?”

  “Yeah, well. As long as the shooting stopped, I wasn’t about to say anything.”

  A spark of hope began to flare in my soul. “If we’ve got the survey data, that will show the terraform site where Duchess found the synthreactor.” And that was something I could bargain with.

  But then my conscience stomped on the flicker of optimism. “I can’t,” I said. “Not after promising Davo.”

  Archer’s eyes lit with mischief. “You promised you wouldn’t give the survey data to Barony. But you never said anything about the Settlement Authority, did you?”

  CHAPTER 30

  All debts come due

  Once again, Kojo and I sat across a table from Mzee Yaga of the Settlement Authority. Beside her sat a different, but no less hostile, officer of the Corridor Patrol. This time, we were in an interrogation room at the Corridor Patrol’s sector headquarters on Kriti. The gray, windowless walls seemed designed to suck every particle of hope from an arrestee’s soul.

  In my case, it was succeeding.

  But Kojo had found an advocate willing to accept our case, and she seeme
d at home in the grim surroundings.

  The damaged synthreactor core rested in an out-of-the-way corner, about as inconspicuous as a still-steaming meteor. Yaga’s eyes kept straying to it, and every time her fist clenched a little tighter.

  Our advocate kept her hand on the datacon, keeping it enticingly in view but out of reach of the Gavs. I had to admire her negotiation skills. Whenever Yaga seemed on the verge of telling the Patrol officer to take us to the cells, the advocate lightly tapped the datacon, drawing Yaga’s gaze back to it like a magnet.

  “And so my clients, feeling uncertain of the Authority’s ability to carry out its sting operation against a wily outlaw like Ordalo, felt the need to take the dangerous course of attempting to locate the illegal terraforming site themselves. Suspecting that either Barony or Troy forces were complicit, they had to engage in a certain amount of subterfuge as they searched the fringes of the Gloom for likely colony sites.”

  The Patrol officer glowered at me. “Impersonating Corridor Patrol personnel is a serious offense.”

  I itched to defend myself, but I obeyed the advocate’s instructions: subdued dress and demeanor, look humble and keep your mouth shut. Hands clasped in front of me, eyes down, I wore my most sober blue jacket and had let Charity gather my hair into a sedate bun. On the advocate’s advice, I’d gone hatless to emphasize my Gav heritage.

  “Indeed it is,” the advocate agreed. “Only the desperate need to get this vital information to the proper authorities induced my client to take such a posture. It will not be repeated.” In fact, we’d already solemnly presented the uniform coat, properly cleaned, to Patrol headquarters, together with the dead Patrol officer’s grooming kit and a pair of socks.

  Kojo was on his best behavior as well, dressed in one of Papa’s more conservative jackets. His respectful posture toward the Gavs, however, didn’t prevent him from an occasional admiring glance at the attractive advocate.

  Yaga folded her hands, a malicious glint in her eye. “These two have admitted to illegal transport of restricted technology.”

  “And they have complied with every aspect of the plea bargain they made with you,” our advocate said, “taking significant risks in the process. When, through no fault of theirs, your operation failed to achieve its goal, they took additional steps to find what your own people could not. This datacon contains a survey conducted by a Barony ship in disputed territory, revealing the location of an unlicensed Troy terraforming operation. That, and the remains of the synthreactor that the Barony ship appears to have removed from the site, will give you all the evidence you need to locate and prosecute the real criminals.”

  She tapped the datacon again, and added dryly, “I understand that you reward positive results.”

  Yaga and the officer exchanged a glance.

  “Very well,” Yaga said. “Amnesty on the tech smuggling charge, provided that your clients understand that any repeat will be dealt with very harshly.”

  I let out a breath.

  “But on the impersonation charge,” the Patrol officer added, “the sector commander has insisted on punishment. Two months in prison or a fine of ten thousand sovereigns.”

  Hiram, Archer, and Charity crowded around as Kojo and I slunk down the steps of the Corridor Patrol sector headquarters.

  That is, I slunk, a convicted felon. Kojo strode out, head up, free and cleared of all charges. As for the advocate, she’d taken her fee up front and was already defending some other lowlife.

  Charity laughed and threw her arms around me. Hiram patted my back, “Welcome back, missy.”

  Once Charity released me, Archer hugged me and whispered, “I never thought I’d be married to a criminal.”

  I’d have to file that divorce, soon. For his own good.

  “Thank you,” I sputtered, wiping my eyes, “for putting up the money for my fine. Thank you all.”

  “Come on,” Kojo said. “Everybody back to the ship. Let’s put this burzing rock behind us.”

  As we headed to the docks, Kojo held me back a moment. “Remember, sis,” he whispered, “that I’m the one who paid most of your fine out of my share of the rhollium. You owe me. Someday that debt’s going to come due.”

  Want to read more of Sparrowhawk’s adventures?

  Fugitive

  Sparrowhawk Book 3

  Hybrid Patch has avoided her mother’s Gavoran people ever since her father rescued her from slavery at the age of seven. But when the hero of a Gav political reform movement is threatened, Patch slips back into Gav society to rescue her. Struggling with mounting problems in her Sparrowhawk family and distracted by a devastatingly attractive Gav man, Patch dodges spies and informers while racing to find the endangered dissident ahead of a bounty hunter.

  If you’re a fan of Firefly, Star Wars, or Battlestar Galactica, or the books of Elizabeth Moon or John Scalzi, you’ll enjoy the rough-and-tumble space adventures of Patch and the crew of Sparrowhawk.

  Acknowledgments

  This was a fun book to write, but it never would have made it to print without the help of others to bring it into publishable shape.

  There is nothing like objective, constructive criticism to improve one’s writing. I’m extremely grateful to my critique buddies at Critiquecircle.com for their support and suggestions, especially my mentor, Douglas Phillips, author of the Quantum Series books.

  Shannon Roberts and Kelley Frodel were tremendous help in the editing stages.

  Thanks to JD&J Design LLC for their fabulous covers.

  A special acknowledgment to my mother, Eathel Jones Hoff, for the berry-pail ghost story—a true story from her childhood in rural Georgia.

  Finally, an infinity of thanks to my spouse, Ari Patrinos, for science consulting and his unflagging support, and to daughters Maritsa and Thalia for their support and patience with my technical questions.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Kathryn Hoff has studied anthropology, manned the trenches on archeological digs, penetrated the mysteries of financial statements, and negotiated billion-dollar investments into developing countries. She has now graduated to making up stories. When not writing, she volunteers at a major zoo. Favorite animal: Heterocephalus glaber, the naked mole-rat.