DarkShip Thieves (24 page)

"Yes, but ships self destructing?"

He sighed. "We had to go back to Earth orbit to harvest the pods, because our whole machinery was designed for it. Besides, there really weren't many other ways to find that much energy. And we needed the energy to make Eden livable. So we took the risk. But we expected them to lie in waiting for us. Wherever they were, they had to know we needed to come back. We expected them to lie in wait to capture us. The ships were—and still are—built with all sorts of safety features, starting with the fact that they're dark ships, able to hide in the dark of the power tree night. Then there's evaders and of course the cat's elfing plays into fast evasion. But each ship is also equipped with a final self destruct button that will make the inside of it a burnt-out, hallowed hull. If you are captured and can't escape in any other way, then you must self-destruct." He took his hands from his pockets and looked at them as if they were alien artifacts and he was not quite sure where they'd come from. "For three hundred years no cat and no nav needed this feature. We . . . All trained in it. But the legions of earthwo—Earthers hunting us never materialized. We realized, from what you told us, that we'd become a legend of sorts."

He took a deep, wavering breath. "Until now."

"They—" My legs had gone very weak and I sat down, heavily on the soft grass. "They are hunting for darkship thieves." It wasn't quite a question, though I wanted it to be a question, and one that caused Kit's father to laugh. But he didn't. He nodded, once.

"They're using . . . well, probably some form of detection mechanism. Our engines make not imperceptible noise, of course, and they give out a power signature, but . . . They never looked before, but now they are, and they're lying in waiting and they're . . ."

"Firing on ships?" I asked, hoping against hope that was true, because if that were true, then it wouldn't be so bad. It would just mean they'd lost patience with the energy thefts and they'd decided to put a stop to them. Though of course firing on anything in the powertrees was dangerous and they had said that the ships were self destructing.

Kit's father was chewing on the corner of his lower lip, something Kit also did. "No. They're pulling them with tractor rays. Trying to get them to Circum Terra." He made a little gesture with his hand, as if he were trying to dispel bad thoughts. "So far all those observed being captured, have behaved with great sense of duty and self-destructed. But it's disrupting the power runs. People are going back again. Some of the ones that returned went back three times and came back with half cargo. And the others . . . Managed to evade the ray but sustained damage and had to repair it. I'm hoping that's all that happened to Anne."

"Me too," I said. But I was thinking of Kit getting damaged in a way that blinded him and without a nav who could go out and do repairs. I wanted to cry or scream or die. By preference die, because then I wouldn't have to think of it again. I looked at Kit's father. "It's all my fault, you know. They're looking for me."

He seemed startled. "For you?" His eyebrows went up. "Well, maybe finding out that you disappeared from the powertrees, lifesaving pod and all, gave them the idea we exist. But I don't think they're looking for you specifically."

I was hugging my knees. "Kit went right into the bay," I said. "In Circum Terra. To rescue me." I realized that overtime I'd become convinced that's just what he'd been doing. Made perfect sense. After our mind link, I realized that when I had realized I was ambushed I'd probably screamed out mentally. And Kit had picked it up. Which also had to mean he was hovering far closer than the hour away he'd said he was. "I don't know the exact circumstances, because I was unconscious," I said, and told him the whole story.

He listened, his eyes rounding. "He can hear you? Mind talk?" He shook his head. "He is trained. He probably felt your distress from the moment you knew there were armed men around you." He frowned. "But you realize you can't be right."

"Beg your pardon?"

He shook his head. "It couldn't have been the same people who were chasing you and then waiting for you in the bay," he said.

"They were," I protested. "My father's goons. I know them."

"But . . ." Kit's father said. "How would they know you were going into that bay in particular?"

I opened my mouth. "They saw me come in?" I asked.

"But that means they must have had the whole of Circum waiting for you. They must have mobilized observers. That would take a great deal of manpower. It can't be just the men who were after you."

"But—" In my mind the conspiracy expanded to include everyone at circum. Perhaps everyone on Earth. Well, at least all the Good Men. Perhaps this was a plot to get rid of the Sinistra line. "But that would indicate it is me they're looking for." I looked at him. "If you send me back, there's a good chance they'll leave you alone."

"But we can't do that," he said. "They would have you then and know everything about us. And we don't know they would stop. Once they've found us, they might decide to exterminate us."

I almost told him that they would probably just kill me and forget all about the darkship thieves. But I was afraid he would actually consider it, if he thought only I was at risk. And when it came right down to it I felt that I, like Kit, couldn't quite muster the will to die. Even if in my case part of it was because I'd promised him not to do anything stupid.

Of all the idiot promises to make, when I'd, in fact, spent most of my life doing something stupid every minute I was awake.

I waited up with Kit's father, as long as I could keep my eyes open, but Anne did not arrive. No other ships arrived. No news. Finally I crawled into my bed, exhausted, my eyes burning.

And found I couldn't sleep. Behind my closed eyes passed scenes of Kit alone in the Cathouse, a tractor ray having destroyed all his nodes, without a navigator who could go out and repair them. In these images he was blinded, though I had no idea why he should be, unless the tractor ray were luminous also.

I knew rationally he wasn't even at the powertrees yet. I knew he couldn't be. But I didn't want him to go there, either. Screw the debt I'd got him into. Screw it all. I wanted to know Kit was safe.

In my mind I screamed for him to come back, screamed that there was danger ahead. Of course, there was no reply and no sense that he had got it. The ridiculous ability appeared to have a range, which was stupid. What was the point of telepathy if you couldn't just communicate instantly across the universe?

Probably something designed by the Mules like the stupid, stupid powertrees, the stupid, stupid bio improvements of Elfed people, and possibly the stupid, stupid bio wombs. Without bio-wombs, Kit would have died when his mother died, I would have died in the powertrees months ago. In the frame of mind I was in, this seemed by far the preferable consummation to the whole matter.

My eyes burning as though I'd stared too long at the sun, I lay in bed, and wished Kit back, willed him safe.

It wasn't that I didn't care for his sisters—I must, at least to the extent that Kit's father would be made very unhappy by their disappearance. And I liked Kath, anyway. I'd seen her for a very little time, but she seemed to be the sort of woman who kept Kit safe despite his own idiotic self-sabotage.

But if I had to choose one of them to be alive and well, as much as I would regret it, I'd pick Kit. I made the baffling discovery that I couldn't imagine a world without the annoying creature—that I would in fact miss his tendency to lecture me, his obsession with music, even his sullen silences and his tendency to grab my ankle and make me fall on my ass whenever I tried to attack him.

I don't remember getting out of my bed, much less going to Kit's room. But I woke up in his room. And though I also didn't remember getting his violin case from the closet or opening it, it was open next to me, and my hand rested on the glowing wood.

Very carefully, I closed it and put it back.

I had a feeling things were going to get worse and I was right.

Over the next few days, the list of ships now delayed grew. Donna and Jim Bova in the Speedball. Sanford and Lillie Begley in Finnian's Rake. Everitt and Dottie Mickey in the Troglodyte. Alan and Margaret Alexander in the Pounce.

Also over the next few days, I noticed Kit's dad paying more attention to energy expenditure than before. Turning the lights down when fewer people were in the room. Putting two of the serving robots out of commission. Cutting down on trips to the store. "The Energy Board has raised prices," he said. "If that doesn't work to preserve enough energy for urgent tasks, they might have to institute brown outs."

Good news were much rarer. The next two ships arrived almost together, a week later, while I was at work. Work had got insane overnight, as well, because practically every ship that came in needed major repairs. I worked on bashed nodes, destroyed steering systems.

I understood the bubble of silence now—or at least I thought I did. Of course my co-workers would assume this sudden viciousness of the Earthers was because I had arrived. After all, this had never happened before. Now I was here and it was happening.

That they thought I was conscious spy or a traitor, raining destruction on them and that they were wrong didn't matter. What mattered was that they were right in the essentials. This was my fault. If Kit hadn't saved my life and brought me here, all those people who had self-destructed in their ships would still be alive. It was a sobering thought and a terrible one, not made any better because I hadn't intended any of this or because all the laws of every world, even presumably the non-laws of Eden, gave one the right to save one's own life.

The death roll haunted me, but not as much as the idea that Kit might be added to it. Most nights I couldn't sleep unless I were in his room, touching the violin. This was insane, because it wasn't as though the violin preserved his scent or a feel of him—which might have calmed my anxieties. But somehow, it made me feel closer to him and therefore I did it, half afraid his father would find out. But his father didn't seem to care. At least not now.

So I was half asleep and my eyes burned with tiredness as I went trough a checklist on the latest ship, trying to figure out whether I'd got every one of the life support systems working as they should. The fact that the nav had made some interesting improvisations didn't make it easier to fix, though I was glad it had limped home, of course.

And then I heard cheering. It was less than a month since Kit had left, but I wasn't exactly sane—not then. I was flying on tiredness and half-dream and I thought maybe my thoughts had reached him, maybe he'd turned back.

I dropped my tools and stumbled through the corridors, towards the arrival bay. It wasn't hard to find the specific one, because there was a throng going in that direction. This will tell you how strange things had become, because normally mechanics couldn't care less when the ships arrived, except when we had to repair or rearrange something the crew had messed up.

But now a ship arriving at all was a cause for celebration. A ship arriving with actual pods in its hold was an event. There was—though nothing had happened on it yet—talk of rationing powerpods, talk of prioritizing functions that got power first. How they were supposed to do it without any ruling body, I didn't know.

I stumbled along, hoping, hoping, hoping that it was Kit who had turned back. But before we even got to the arrival bay, I heard the name of the ship. It was the An Suaimhneas, flown by Ginger and Mary Alice McCaughtan. The crowd seemed particularly happy that their little boy was also safe and the ship undamaged. Since I hadn't even known—before this—that couples could take their children with them, I felt as if I were in a very odd dream, as I stumbled along.

It wasn't till I got to the bay that I heard the name of the other ship—and it was definitely not the Cathouse. It was the Freedom, flown by Hugh and Amanda Green. Amanda Green, the Nav, a tall, imposing woman with strawberry curls, was talking loudly to the receiving officer, as I got back. I could hear the echo of her words, on the emphatic parts.
Explosion, salvageable, arrival, light beam
and then a name that chilled me to the core,
Anne Denovo.

Not Kit's sister. I thought of what this would do to his father. I thought of what it would do to Kit. I knew from his mind how much he loved his family, how attached he was to them.

I couldn't hear anything else, above the crowd noise. But before I could push my way to the front or ask someone what she had said, someone near me repeated it to a friend. "The Earthworms are using a light ray, trying to blind the Cat and confuse the Nav before they can self destruct. The Greens saw Anne DeNovo's Fireball get hit with it, but it got them with a powerpod on the grabber, and the powerpod blew."

"They're dead?" the friend asked, as I felt as if someone had dipped me, head first into ice.

"No, no," the first speaker, who sounded like Darla, said. And before I could take a full breath of relief. "Fortunately the Nav wasn't in his cabin, which was hit pretty hard. They're both fine, but they have asked for special landing, because the ship will have to be radiation scrubbed. About half of it is unusable."

I rushed away from the crowd, and thumbed my ring to connect to the Denovo compound. I got Kit's dad, and started to tell him, "Anne is—"

"I know," he almost shouted. "Isn't it wonderful?"

And it was, of course, and I was the last person to tell him I wanted his son home. Instead, I assumed—rightly—that the household would be celebrating. I also assumed I wouldn't be welcome to the celebrations, though perhaps I would. You really couldn't tell with this family. They'd been more forbearing and kinder to me than anyone could imagine. The fact that through the long nightly vigils with Kit's dad, waiting to hear on arrivals, he'd never once said this was all my fault, probably meant they were a very forgiving clan. But all the same, I couldn't go back. Not to a celebratory dinner, which Kit's father was now talking about.