DarkShip Thieves (3 page)

This was the last shock, and the worst of all. Because it dawned on me slowly: Third, I couldn't go to Circum.

And this was a problem indeed. Because space lifepods depended on the fact that the ship in trouble would have sent a rescue signal. And faster ships would have come to rescue any survivors within hours.

This meant . . . I had oxygen for a few hours more—I wasn't sure how many as I didn't know the speed of the lifepod nor how long I'd slept. Not nearly enough to make it to Earth.

I looked behind me, at the lifepods pursuing me. The formation they were in. I could only go to Circum or the other way into the dangerous powertrees. They'd never catch me before I made it to Circum, but what was the point, if they could capture me without getting there before me?

What other choice did I have? I thought of my time in Circum Terra. I'd flirted with scientists and befriended techs, but the ones I'd felt most comfortable with were the powerpod harvesters. These men, who risked their lives daily navigating through the thorny, dark labyrinth of the powertrees and harvesting the unstable powerpods, were somehow the same kind of person I was. We were kin. We understood each other.

Now, with Circum up and to my left—well, to my insides everything felt like down and left, but it was relatively above the lifepod and I knew it—I had the forest of powertrees, the powerpods glowing upon them like captive fireflies to my right. Earth cast its shadow on us and put us in night.

If I couldn't go to Circum, why not the powertrees?

Fine, fine, any rational person would refuse to consider the powertrees. Ever. But I was never a rational person. And what choice did I have? They wouldn't pursue me in there.

And if I could find a harvester there, in the forest of coiling branches, if I could get the harvester to take me on, I'd have a chance, wouldn't I? I could talk to the harvester operator and convince him of my story, and get him on my side before I landed in Circum. I might have a chance. Just a slim chance, but better than none.

I veered off towards the powertrees. Calling them trees is, of course, a misnomer. They have no trunks and no roots. They are rather a conglomeration of twisting branches with what appear to be gigantic thorns growing out of them. And here and there, amid them, the powerpods in various stages of ripeness, radiation glowing through their skins.

What did I know about them? Absolutely nothing. Or nothing more than you learned in your primary programs. That the trees are a biological solar collector, planted and grown in the late twenty first century during the reign of Earth's bio-rulers. That they were fed organic matter from Earth via the ancient beanstalk that predated circum terra and which was no longer safe for people, but which still worked perfectly for cargo. That they collected the sun's radiation into the powerpods which, in turn, brought to Earth, powered our civilization.

How the trees grew in space, in vacuum? No idea. Clearly they were a closed system, their skin immune to the vacuum of space. How? No idea. But then again, neither had our leading scientists any ideas. The bio rulers, fortunately deposed in turmoils long before my birth, had been bio engineered to be well beyond our intellectual capacity. None of us could match it. But we still used the power system. All or our technology was keyed to it. And it was so abundant and inexhaustible

Even the harvesters had no idea how the trees grew in vaccuum. All they knew was how to pick the pods at the sweet spot between ripeness and instability. Too little ripe, and they would have too little power, barely worthy transporting to circum. Too much and they would blow up and take the harvester with them before ever getting to Circum extruding chamber.

Oh, another thing they knew—or said they knew—and that was that darkship thieves, the descendants of a few escaped biorulers, lived somewhere beyond the stars and stole ripe pods. Or so they'd told me. I wasn't sure it was a true legend, or the equivalent of stories to frighten a child.

I'd given them no thought at all—not until I found myself flying into the tangle of powertrees.

The joystick was sweaty in my hand, and it was hard to maneuver—even this small a ship—between trunk and powerpod, carefully, carefully. Harvesters had precision controls and computer aided steering. I had a joystick and an unwieldy pod that reacted just a little too slow.

Down over a branch, I dodged above the next just in time to avoid smashing into it, and then there was a huge powerpod in front of me, the fissures in the skin indicating it was overripe and about to blow. I twisted sideways and barely skidded away from it. And found myself threading a needle hole, barely large enough for the pod to dive through. I hoped.

I swallowed hard, as I went into it. I'd have prayed if I believed in gods.

And then, out of nowhere I hit something. Not hard. And whatever I hit was not as deadly solid as the diamond-hard trunks and certainly no powerpod. For one, it didn't blow up.

Even after hitting it, I couldn't see what it was. It was . . . dark. Straining, I could make out a rounded outline, but barely distinguishable from the surrounding gloom.

My throat closed. It was a darkship. It was a darkship piloted by the descendant of the biorulers. The biorulers had been inhumanely intelligent, modified to be that way. They'd also been unable to reproduce—leading to their being called Mules—to ensure that the human race survived. But if this was a descendant, they must have been able to reproduce? Or was this one of the original biorulers? How long did they live? And what did they want with us? Their rule of Earth had been utterly ruthless. They'd moved and eliminated populations without regard. What would they do with me?

In a panic, I looked behind, looked around for a harvester. But there was no one in sight. I tried to move away from the ship, but I seemed to have caught somehow. All I managed was a long, painful scrape.

And all of a sudden my com button pushed itself down and a voice came over it. A deep, male voice, with an odd accent. "Blazing Light," it said. "Why are you scraping my sensors?"

I froze. This thing wasn't a ship. It was a creature. A dark, huge and powerful creature. And I'd injured it.

"Sensors?" I said, in the general direction of the com, sounding far less assured than normal.

There was a pause. Then the voice said, "
Light
," as though that ought to mean something. "Ship sensors," the voice said at last.

I blinked at the dark sphere. So it was a ship? Not a being? I felt fearful, which was odd.

It's not that I didn't understand the meaning of fear. I understood it perfectly. Fear was what little old ladies who ran expensive boarding schools felt when they took a look at me. That was why they refused to admit me, unless dad brought force or money to bear. Fear was what larger young men who ran military academies felt after I got the first one over on them. And that was why they called Daddy Dearest in hysterics and demanded I be taken home again.

What I didn't understand was
feeling
fear. But neither could I deny I was afraid of this dark, secret ship—this legend come to life. Could it just be another type of harvester? What, all black? To . . . what? Allow its fellows to ram into it? Or to play a prank on tourists? Likely, except that Circum Terra and the powertrees were not open to tourists. Only to butting-in Juvenile Patricians. And those were few and far between.

Trying to understand who this might be, trying to figure out how to react, I stayed quiet long enough that the voice said, in the tone of one who has reached an unpleasant decision, "Right. I'm bringing you in."

Bringing me in? "Bringing me in to where?"

"The Cathouse," the voice said, with an absolutely matter of fact tone.

I blinked, and my panic receded. The whole sequence of events from waking up with Andrija Baldo in my room to some space-borne bordello's kidnaping me only made sense—and perfect sense at that—if one assumed that I was dreaming.

The certainty that I remained safely tucked away in my bed, in the space cruiser, kept me still and only
mildly
curious as something grabbed the lifepod. I didn't know what it was, not to draw a diagram but it looked like a mechanical claw that enveloped the transparent ship from all directions and . . . pulled and shoved. My stomach, already tempted my lack of gravity, now did its best to catapult towards my mouth.

I had a moment of doubt, because one doesn't normally feel queasy in dreams, and then stopped thinking about it because the claw shoved me neatly through a membrane, then another—an air lock?—and into a vast, dark space.

How vast it was, I couldn't tell, because it was dark. Though not dark as outside. More a twilight type of darkness, a veiled light—like a late Summer sunset over the Mediterranean.

My lifepod was set down, with a resounding metallic thud and then the claw withdrew. I counted to five. Then to five again. Everything in me wanted to move. I wanted to open the door. I wanted to take off running. I did not want to sit here, waiting, confined—my legs bent backward and fast growing numb.

But what if there was no air out there? Nonsense. Nonsense. Why would there be an airlock if no air? But what if it was ammonia? Or something like that?

No. If he—whoever he was, Mule or darkship thief, or whatever—was anything human derived, he breathed air.

I'd just made up my mind, and set my hand on the release bar for the lock that would allow the upper part of the lifepod to open, when there was a thud from somewhere near the nose of the lifepod. A thud like . . . like a giant door sliding open. Someone was coming.
Something
was coming. For
me
.

I'd be damned if I was going to meet it while cramped and bent in here. I pushed down the door opening release very fast, then pushed the lifepod open, in one move, while holding my slip—what remained of it—closed with my other hand.

And found myself facing someone who looked utterly alien. Oh, not alien like with tentacles and stuff like the bad mid twenty-first-century sensies. I mean, those were not really scary. What's so scary about a squid or an octopus? Even if it's walking on land?

No. This . . . creature was scary because he was human, undeniably and certainly of the same human stock I was—bipedal, general body shape of human male. Truth be told, wonderful body shape of human male. He was tall, with broad, straight shoulders, a narrow waist, the muscular legs of a dancer or runner. All of which were clearly visible because he was wearing what could have been a dancer's costume—bright red and made of some material that molded every inch and possibly every pore.

I noticed that first, but then I looked up. And above the neck . . . Oh, don't misunderstand me. He didn't look deformed. Just familiar and different in an unbearable combination. His face was that of a human male, in bone and skin—a broad face, with a hint of the Nordic and a square chin, that would not have looked out of place on a redhead.

Only the hair above the face was not red. It was . . . calico, like a cat's. A mixture of blond and brown and red, bright enough to be visible in this dim light. And his eyes, broad and bright, had no sclera at all. They were green like a cat's and, like a cat's, slanted and shining in the dark.

"Cat got your tongue?" he asked, and seemed to see this as the epitome of humor.

I must have made an inarticulate sound, not so much of fear as of shock. And I let the front of my gown drop open. His eyes widened, just a little, and he did the quick once over, up and down checking movement. So, strange he might be. But human he was. And male.

"Where am I?" I asked. "Who are you?"

"What? Are you mentally defective as well as an Earthworm?" he asked. "You set out to catch a darkship thief, and you're surprised you caught him?"

"I'm not . . ." I said. "I didn't . . ." Never had I found it so difficult to express myself in the right words. And then I realized what I'd first missed in the low light. In his hand, he had a weapon which he pointed at me.

It wasn't like any weapon I'd ever seen—narrow and bright yellow and thin at the tip, it looked like . . . a pointer of some sort. But I had no doubt from the way he was holding it that he was armed and from the way he was looking at me that he was dangerous.

I grabbed my ruined slip and held it one-handed, calculating how fast I could move to kick that weapon out of his hands, before he could—

"Don't
think
about it, Earthworm," he said and smiled. Even teeth, but not a pleasant smile. "I don't have the time to play with you. I'm mid harvest, and I can only leave the ship on autopilot so long. So, I'm going to put you somewhere where you can't trouble me." He stepped out of the way and let me see, past him, an open door leading into what looked like some sort of corridor. "Go. Forward. Past me."

There's only two things anyone can do in that situation. Obey or not obey. I chose the third. As I was walking past him, I turned and attacked him aiming a high kick at the gun and getting ready to fall again, entrechat, and kick his groin on the way down.

It should have worked. It always worked. But his hand met my foot, held it. Sending me spilling backward, my head hitting the floor, hard. Dazed I looked up, to catch again that brief look of appreciation at what my split-up slip revealed.

Oh, yes, he was male. And human. Very. But the expression of interest passed as soon as he'd shown it, his—warm, vise-like—hand let go of my foot, and he seemed to jump back. Or rather, he seemed to fade out and appear further back. Quickly. "Up," he said. "Up. Don't try that again. Next time I'll fire. I swear I will. Up."

He looked discomposed, which was odd, because he'd stopped my kick just in time. Why did he look like he'd suffered an unexpected blow? What was he afraid of?

Whatever it was, it wasn't my fast moves. And I wasn't stupid. If at first you fail, you don't try and try again in the same manner. You fall back and think of a better way to succeed. So I walked past him—as dignified and composed as I could be—into a narrow corridor, where the walls appeared to be made of some hard, poured material, ceramite or perhaps dimatough, in an iridescent, pearly grey. At least that's what I thought the color was, which was hard to tell in the almost-darkness.