The Serrano Connection (72 page)

"I'm warnin' ya," the pirate officer said. "Answer, or we'll blow your holds . . ."

"All right," Lund said, as much to gain time as anything. "I'll send my people to the lifeboats—"

"We'll see a crew list," the man said, smiling unpleasantly. "Right now, afore you can doctor it up. If a lifeboat separates before we've approved the list, we'll blow it."

Lund's mind raced into high gear. The crew list did not mention gender—and certainly not sexual preferences—so if he could just keep the medical records out of their hands . . .

"And the medical records," the man said, "in case you got some of them so-called modern women that don't have good women's names."

He could refuse, but then what? According to scan, he was facing weapons easily capable of blowing his ship. But they wouldn't want to blow his ship . . . they would want the cargo, and perhaps the ship itself, intact.

"Personnel and medical records aren't networked," he said, thanking whatever gods were around, including those he didn't believe in, for the fact that this was standard, and known to be standard.

"Ten minutes," the pirate said, and clicked off.

Ten minutes. What doctoring could he do in ten minutes? And why hadn't he denied the presence of women right away, so that he might have had a chance to pass them off as men? But the ship's tiny medical staff had been listening, and Hansen gave him a call.

"I'm changing the genders, and stripping out all reference to gender-specific medications . . . six minutes for that. What else do you think?"

"Seqalin says they have some weird beliefs about sexual practice—but I don't know which."

"Umm. If they go to space in single-gender ships, maybe they have obligatory homosexuality in space? I could code everyone as male/male preference."

"Yeah, but if we're wrong . . . I don't know."

"And what about the children?"

Elias Madero
, like most commercial ships, carried some of its crews' children aboard. Children had been found well worth the extra work and worry, in terms of keeping a crew entertained and cooperative. Right now there were six, four under school age and two taking a work-study tour as junior apprentices.

"We put the kids in the core, where the scans are least likely to find them. Sedate the littles. If they just rob the ship and go on . . . the older ones can come back out and send a message. Got to clear out the nursery, though . . ."

"Do it," Lund said. "But don't code gender preference. Just leave it." How was he going to hide the women? And what would happen to them if they were found?

Hazel Takeris, age sixteen, had found her first working trip to be as dull as her father had warned—but she wouldn't have missed it for anything, certainly not another five terms at the Space Dependents Middle School on Oddlink Main Station. So she had willingly performed the routine chores allotted to the apprentices, reminding herself—when enthusiasm for washing dishes or scrubbing the deck flagged—that she could have been listening to Professor Hallas discourse on the history of a planet that lay—to Hazel's mind—in the dim past of human history. A long way away, and very far back, and who really cared which millenium had produced which oddly named king or scientist.

When the alarm came, she was doing inventory of the galley stores, as ordered by the cook. She heard nothing of the ensuing discussion, because Cookie had told her to get back to work, and be sure her count was right. Thirty-eight three-kilo sacks of wheat flour. Six half-kilo boxes of sodium chloride salt, and four of a 50/50 mix of potassium and sodium chlorides. Eight—

"Haze—drop that and listen up." Cookie's face was an odd shade, the rich tan paled and splotchy. "Get four emergency ration kits, and go to Core 32. Hop it!"

"What—?" But apprentices didn't ask questions, not when a crew member looked like that. Hazel grabbed four emergency kits, and as she went past Cookie dumped two more on top of them. She scurried as fast as she could through the corridors, turned into the drop to the Core, and met her dad, who was even paler than Cookie.

"Haze—gimme two of those—now go to 32. We're going to lock you in. I put your suit in there already. Put it on, and wait. Be sure you wait long enough."

She had grown up a spacer's child; she could figure it out. "Raiders," she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

"Yeah. Go on, now. You and Stinky will be awake; we've sedated the littles, and they'll be in Core 57 and 62. Oh—and remember, it's the Nutex Militia."

Hazel fell down the drop, landing easily, feet first, on the pad. Thirty-two was clockwise four; she had known the geography of this ship from early childhood. Thirty-two's hatch was open; she slid in, dumped her rations, pulled the hatch shut, and locked it from inside. Her suit stood slumped in one corner, along with a stack of extra oxygen tanks. She got herself into it, her fingers shaking, fumbling at the catches and seals.

She started to report herself secure, on suit com, and then didn't—what if the raiders were already aboard? No one had told her when to expect boarding; no one had told her when to come out. Wait long enough? How long was that? How was she supposed to know?

In her suit, she could not quite lie down in the compartment, but she propped herself corner-to-corner, so that if she fell asleep, she would not fall and make a noise. She had the helmet open to ambient air—no sense in wasting suit air yet, and the helmet would snap shut automatically at any drop in pressure. She looked at her suit chrono, and marked the time. Wait long enough. She wished she knew how long.

She wished she and Stinky had been in the same compartment so they could talk. As the two apprentices, they had formed a natural alliance. Besides that, they liked each other's parents, and had spent the voyage trying to maneuver her father and his mother into some kind of arrangement. So far the adults had been resistant, but she and Stinky hadn't given up hope. Surely everyone felt the same urge to partner that she and Stinky felt . . . that's how adults came together to have children, after all.

Locked in the empty compartment, it finally occurred to Hazel that the straightforward solution would have been for her and Stinky to partner, and leave the parents alone . . . but she wasn't ready to partner anyone. Not yet. Later . . . she allowed herself a few delicious minutes of imagining what it would be like if Stinky were in the same compartment, without the pressure suits or the adult supervision. She had thoughts like that, even though she had chosen to take the treatment to delay puberty; she might look only ten or eleven, but she was sixteen for true.

She pulled her mind away from that to the littles, locked away in other compartments. Sedated, her dad had said. How long would the sedation last? Brandalyn was always first up in the morning, bouncing around . . . would she come out of sedation first? Had they put her in the same compartment as her sister? Surely they'd thought of that. Stassi was quieter, and very attached to her big sister. The other two littles, Paolo and Dris, were cousins.

She looked at the chrono. Only fifteen minutes had passed. That couldn't be long enough. The raiders might not have boarded yet. She might have to wait hours.

Her suit transmitted nonspecific vibrations that she could not identify—except that they were different from those she knew so well after all these months aboard. One hour, two, three. How long did raiders stay aboard a ship to plunder it? Docked at a regular cargo station, the automated handlers could unload a hold in seven hours and twelve minutes—if nothing went wrong. Would the raiders try to unload an entire hold? All the holds? Would they have the right equipment? How long would it take them?

It would be easier to steal the whole ship; she felt cold as she thought of it. If they did, if they took the entire ship . . . then what would happen to her? To Stinky? To the littles?

She heard noises—nearby noises. It must be the raiders, because no one had unlocked her compartment yet. Shuffling, thumping—then a shriek that stiffened her. Brandy, that would be; they had all joked that she had a scream that would slice steel plates. The child screamed again. Hazel clambered up, clumsy in the suit, and tried to unlock the hatch. She had to stop them—she had to protect the child. She had the lock undone when the hatch was yanked out of her grip, and two big men grabbed her, one for each arm, and pulled her out of the compartment. She could see Brandy kicking and screaming in the grip of another, who was trying to gag her with a length of cloth. Stassi was crying, more quietly, in the grip of another; the two little boys clung to Stinky, who looked as scared as she felt.

"A girl," one of the men said. "The perverts." Brandy's scream choked off; the man holding her had managed to tie the gag. "You take her," he said, shoving Brandy into Hazel's arms. "And bring her along."

She held Brandy to her, trying to comfort the child, who was sobbing into the gag. Stassi clung to one leg and Paolo to the other. Stinky carried Dris. The raiders pushed her along, back up toward the bridge.

The first thing she saw, coming into the bridge, was her dad's body in a pool of blood. She almost dropped Brandy, but the child clung to her, legs and arms fastened tight. There were other bodies, all people she knew—Baris the navigator, and Sig the cargo chief, and—and Stinky's mother, gagged and bound, but glaring furiously. All the women of the crew, she noted, were lying there in a row, bound and gagged. Captain Lund faced the bridge access, bound to his command seat. And all the armed men wearing the same uniform as the ones who had captured her.

The leader turned to Captain Lund. "You lied to us, captain. That wasn't very smart." He drawled the words out, an accent that Hazel had never heard before.

"I . . . wanted to save the children."

"God saves the children, by giving them to those who will bring them up in righteousness." The leader smiled, a smile that made Hazel feel cold inside.

Captain Lund looked at Hazel, then at Stinky. "I'm sorry," he said. The leader slammed his weapon into Captain Lund's head.

"You don't talk, old man. Nobody talks to our children but our family. And you're going to be really sorry that you lied . . ." He turned to his men. "Get goin' now . . . let's check these heathen sluts out, see if any of 'em's worth botherin' with."

Hazel lay in the compartment that had been the spare passenger cabin, trying to hug all the littles at once. Dris was still dozing, and she didn't know if that was the sedative or the lump on his head. Paolo whimpered softly; Stassi had her whole hand in her mouth, sucking furiously. Brandy was out cold, snoring through the gag. Hazel wanted to take it out, but she was afraid of the man with the weapon who stood by the hatch. She was afraid of everything. She had to pretend not to be, because the littles needed her; she was the one person they knew, the one person who could make them feel safe, if anything could after what they'd been through. How could you make someone feel safe if you didn't feel safe yourself?

She still could not believe it was all real. The soreness in her own body was real, and the hunger, and the fear, but—had she really seen all she remembered? The women who had been her aunts, her mentors, since her own mother died, all . . . she didn't even know the words for what had been done to them, except the killing at the end. And poor Captain Lund . . . she had known him since she could remember, a gentle man, a kind man . . . and they had stuffed his mouth with the tongues of the women, and then . . . and then shot him, at the last.

Paolo whimpered a bit louder; the man by the hatch growled. Hazel stroked the child's back. "Easy," she murmured. "Sshh." She wouldn't think about it any more; she would think only of the littles, who needed her.

"These are the rules," the raider said. Hazel sat on the deck, with Brandy in her lap and the others nestled against her. "Look at me," the raider said. Hazel had been looking at the littles, because she'd been slapped already for looking—staring, the man had said—at one of the raiders. Now she looked up, her shoulders hunching. "That's right," the man said. "You look when I tell you to, where I tell you to. Now listen. These are the rules. You don't look at our faces unless you're told to. You don't talk. You—girlie—you can whisper to the babies if you have to, but only if none of us's talkin'. You keep the babies clean and fed; you keep the compartment and all the rest clean; you do whatever you're told. No talkin', no arguin', nothin'. If you want to keep your tongue in your head."

The grown women hadn't believed that, at least not at first. And they had died. She had to keep her tongue, to comfort the littles.

"Now what do you say?" the man said, leaning close. She was too scared to answer; he'd just told her not to talk. He grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. Her eyes watered. "I'll tell you what you say, girlie. Nothing. You bow your head, when you're told what to do, and you say nothing. Women are not to speak before men. Women are to be obedient in silence. You understand?"

Trapped, terrified, she tried to nod against the pull of his hand on her hair. He let go suddenly, and her head bobbed forward.

"That's right," he said. "Bow your head in respect, in obedience." He straightened up and took a step backward; Hazel watched his boots. "Now you get busy, girlie, and get these brats cleaned up."