DarkShip Thieves (34 page)

There was no answer from his mind, and the feeling that he was nearby had disappeared.

My call of
Kit!
went unanswered, even as I became aware of my surroundings. I was lying on something soft, but it didn't feel like the yielding and accommodating bio-bed Kit and I shared in Eden or the other bio bed we shared in the Cathouse. In fact, it felt very much like a mattress on Earth—soft, but not at body temperature and not molding to me in the way only a bioed thing could.

I had binds on my wrists, binds across my middle. Something—a tube?—was down my throat, taped to the sides of my mouth. Something else obscured my eyes, or at least when I opened them I saw nothing but darkness.

Memory rushed upon me. The coup in my father's space cruiser, Eden, Kit, the Cathouse. A moment of brief panic whispered that it had all been a dream. I'd just had one of my many accidents with the brooms. I was in an hospital, recovering. Everything else was hallucination.

The cloying, disinfectant smell of the hospital seemed to confirm this. A dream. A delusion. Not true. My mind refused to accept it. It couldn't be a dream. It just couldn't. I could have dreamed the darkships, I could even have dreamed Kit as I'd first met him. I could never have dreamed Kit as I'd come to know him—as a person who would love me unconditionally, who would accept the fractured confused person I knew myself to be. That, I could never have dreamed.

So Kit existed, and the whole episode had been true. Where did that leave me?

It left me here, in an hospital bed, strapped down as a mentally unstable patient—with a tube—presumably with nutrients—shoved down my throat and with no ability to defend myself. And no idea where my husband was.

The silly idiot. The gallant fool. What did he think he'd earn giving himself up to Earth? What except death? Did he think he would be on hand to defend me from whatever threatened me?

I both knew that was exactly what he thought and dreaded his misguided belief. But one thing I dreaded more.

If I had been brought into this hospital to recover from severe burns, and if I was now struggling towards full consciousness, it must have been two weeks, perhaps a month, since Kit had surrendered himself—and the Cathouse, not only endangering himself but betraying Eden's trust in its pilots—in an attempt to save me.

The chances that Kit was still alive were very low. There were laws on Earth, after all, that dictated the death of anyone bioed away from human genome standard.

They wouldn't be able to see most of his modifications. He could hide the fact that he was a Mule. But his hair and his eyes would not be hidden, and would be obvious. And besides my father had been there. And I failed to see how my father would not want Kit dead, if nothing else to hide the fact that I'd married what he'd consider a monstrosity.

For a moment I felt as though I'd sink into the mattress, as though my loss and grief would overwhelm all. At the same time boiling rage bubbled up, smoldering, from depths I didn't even known I had possessed.

I had been angry before. In fact, many people, including those who had tried in vain to mold me into the perfect patrician's daughter, would claim that anger was my abiding problem. But I'd never been this angry or at so many people.

I smoldered with rage at my father—who was almost certainly still alive and whose role in all this I couldn't even begin to understand. I burned with fury at myself for not having prevented Kit from coming back to danger; I felt strong annoyance at my husband's stupid chivalry—but most of all I longed to punish Earth. All of it. Landstates and dead zones, protectorates and seacities. Them and their stupid laws. Ever since the turmoils, they'd banned an entire type of people, an entire class of bio-improvements, and for what? Were we any better than we'd been? So the Mules had been inconsiderate, perhaps violent. They'd not taken in account the will of the people they governed.

The Good Men weren't any better, and like the Mules they had no more than a tenuous connection to the people they governed. They were just a few families, lording it over the mass of mankind for whom they didn't care anymore than the Mules ever had.

My fury at Earth could have consumed the planet in a giant conflagration.

Correction, would consume the planet in a giant conflagration.

I made sure not to move in any way that could be interpreted as my being awake, as I listened for any noises indicating people in the room. I heard a heavy step to my left, almost certainly a male foot. From the right came softer sounds—as if produced by someone smaller—and a tinkle of glass or ceramite, as though the somebody were manipulating a tray full of objects—medicines or perhaps surgical implements.

"I still don't understand," the voice from my left said, speaking in a low rumble that confirmed my suspicions of its gender. "Why they have us here, guarding her, with weapons. She's just a little girl."

The person on the right didn't say anything for a while, and when she spoke, it was in a sort of soft, concerned tone. "I don't understand it, either, but they tell me she is very dangerous. And besides, I don't think they'd order us to guard the daughter of a Good Man if that weren't true." She sounded dubious even as she said it.

Oh, good. I liked it when I took my guards by surprise. Gently, carefully, so deliberately that I didn't seem to be doing it and could stop at any moment, I started testing both the firmness of the bind around my wrist and the tightness of it.

The bad news were that it was indeed tight. The good news, that it was made of tensile, non rigid material, like most of the binds put on you in hospitals, where they were after all afraid you might damage yourself with an unconscious movement. This meant if I worked slowly, if I worked carefully, I could free that hand. Which, of course, would make it much easier for me to free myself of all the other binds.

If there was one thing I couldn't stand was to be tied down and blindfolded. Someone was going to die a horribly messy death for this.

I thought of Kit tying me in the cathouse and tenderness fueled my rage.
Kit, wherever you are, I'm going to avenge you.

I was pulling, slowly, steadily at my hand, loosening the bind, when I heard a response.
Thena? Thena!

For a moment I wasn't sure I had heard it. It was that faint. But I seized onto it and mind-shouted in the direction of his perceived thought.
Kit?

This time the response was a little stronger.
Light. Bright. Pain. Nausea. Thena? Alive?

Oh, I am very much alive. And I'm coming for you.

Yes.
The one word. So unlike Kit, and yet bearing in it Kit's personality and a curious sense of despair. And then there was something that sounded like a mental scream, like the mind-voice equivalent of a spasm of pain.

Kit!

There was no answer, and I thought they had killed him. But if they had killed him, that meant that they had kept him alive all this time just to communicate with me. Preposterous. No. Kit was alive. That scream was the result of whatever they were doing to him.

Why would they be doing anything to him?

Because he was a darkship thief. They had technologies Earth could only dream of. And besides, Kit knew where they were located, where they could be plundered or exterminated.

Oh, I'd grown up with the full myth of the benevolent government of the Good Men, who cared for their people and sought only their happiness.

Unfortunately for the myth makers, I'd also grown up with my father. It was impossible to see my father at close quarters for most of my life and not to know—know with absolute, gut-born certainty—there were only two things Father and most of the Good Men cared about: power and their personal well being.

Of course they would torture Kit to find out what he knew, and where the people were who knew more. And of course they would pay. It was me against the Good Men of Earth, their armies, their faithful retainers, the massed legions of those they governed.

Poor bastards, they didn't stand a chance. I had them surrounded by my sheer anger and determination. And they wouldn't believe it until it was too late.

I worked steadily, pulling my hand fractionally out, then a little more, and then yet a little more. I knew as well as anyone can that in the situation I'd found myself in, escape was impossible. Of course, this had never stopped me before, and before this I didn't even have Kit to fight for.

If Kit was alive—and I was sure from his voice in my head that he was—then it was my duty to find him, rescue him, and get his shiny white-knight behind back home to Eden. It wasn't some high flung duty, really. Mothers do it for their ducklings and dogs for their masters all the time. It was rather that most basic of all instincts—help those who have helped you. That I loved him only added icing to the cake.

I don't know how long I took working my hand in and out. Really, I wished I wasn't blindfolded because it didn't allow me to know if there were people in the room, and if there were, were they looking at me. So I kept a sharp ear out and stopped as soon as someone rustled near the bed.

Twice, someone touched me, without seeming to realize that I was working to free myself. Once there was the touch of a measuring instrument of some kind against my earlobe. I'd frozen in fear that it was an injector and that I was about to be given a sedative. But it was just a brief touch followed by a beep, that told me they were reading blood pressure, blood sugar, or perhaps degree of doneness for all I knew.

The second time was more helpful as someone flung a coverlet over my naked body. I hadn't been cold before, but the coverlet provided additional cover for my activities. I could pull on my hand more vigorously and bunch my fingers into that almost-dislocating position that made my hand into a thin, sharp wedge—then pull again.

I'd like to say my hand came free in no time at all, but I actually had no idea how long it took me. It seemed like a very long time, because I was measuring minutes in degrees of freedom. Pull, pull, pull. When my hand was finally held only by the middle of my fingers, I forced harder, and expected alarms to shout. They didn't. I moved my hand, slowly, under the coverlet, to be at my side.

To my left, the heavy man stepped, stepped, stepped, away from me, paused at that far end, then stepped back. There was no noise from the right, and either the lady who had been there had left, or she'd sat down and taken up a reader or a game player or one of those things nurses always seem to have on hand for when they're watching an unconscious patient. My ears are good but not that good. Catching the slight touch on a play pad was quite beyond me.

So . . . there was only one thing to do, and it had to be done agonizingly slow, so as not to raise the alarm. I moved my hand, fractional inch by fractional inch, under the coverlet, towards my face, and then felt my face very slowly. The tube going down my throat felt like a standard flexible feeding tube. One advantage of having half-killed yourself in broom accidents before is that you know these things.

The thing over my eyes, on the other hand, didn't feel like the standard blindfold, but more like swim goggles—only clearly opaque. I wondered why there were there, but I had no doubt that I had to remove them enough to see—but not so much that anyone glancing at me would see what I'd done.

It is the tragedy of my life that, having been born to do things suddenly and in a big heated rush, I am forever consigned to doing them slowly, carefully and by almost imperceptible degrees.

There was no choice though. I slowly, slowly, slowly slid the mask upwards. Slowly, slowly, slowly, until a sliver of light showed through the bottom of it.

Bright, stabbing light. My body stiffened. I stopped a spasm through an effort of will. Fortunately the tube in my mouth prevented the gasp from escaping. Light. Bright, bright light.

Light. Burning light.
It was Kit's mind, touching mine, the sort of mind touch we had had in the last few minutes in the Cathouse.
Blinding light.
His eyes hurt as if someone had put a hot poker through them, and his stomach clenched. He too was tied down, somehow and I knew without knowing how that there were two guards in dimatough, with burners, pointing lasers at him. I heard his speaking voice as he would hear it, from within his aching head. He spoke in that matter of fact way he did when he was not giving an inch and would see whoever it was in hell before admitting they could hurt him. "If you don't turn the lights down soon, I will be blind and useless," he said. "And I won't be able do whatever it is you want me to do, even if you convince me." The voice that answered him was Father's and it dewed my body with cold sweat because that too was his "don't give an inch" tone, "Agree to look at Jarl's plans and tell us what we're missing, or we will burn your eyes. And regen them. And burn them again. Until you realize you are not in control. You are not home. Here, you do what we want, or you hope we kill you."

Kit.
He didn't answer. I didn't think he could. Gradually the touch of his mind—pain and confusion and overarching wounded pride and worry for me, receded.

I fought against my own rage, which urged me to hurry up. Instead, I forced the rage into the channels normally taken up by strength, forced it to tame and go slow. I needed rage to do the part of strength, because strength I had not. I'd realized that when I tried to move my hand, when I tried to lift the blindfold. The force behind my actions was maybe a quarter of what I would have expected. As for the bright light, shining under my blindfold, I refused to believe they had me under high beams or—as it felt like—the light of a thousand suns.

It must be, I thought, that my eyes were made extra sensitive to light by being covered for however long it was. I closed my eyes, opened them, closed them, opened them again. Each time the light seemed less stabbingly bright.

Of course, I remembered my eyes had been burned out. What if they hadn't been regenned properly? Fortunately the panic lasted less than a heartbeat, because I opened my eyes, and I could see.

What I could see were just bulky figures that could have been humans or objects. One out against a greater source of light, one quite near me. No, two quite near me, on either side of the bed. Guards? And then one a little further away, lower than the rest but bulkier.