DarkShip Thieves (38 page)

I carefully set the safety on my burner, then reached upward, to hide it in my hair. And had the shock of my lifetime. Where I was used to meeting with curls—and after the last few hours, probably very tangled curls—there was nothing but short, scratchy stubble.

At first I swayed in shock, but then thought set in. I'd been burned. My scalp had probably been part of it, and I very much doubted that radiation was meant to do a girl's hair good, for that matter. So, I was without hair, for the time being. Gee, I hoped Kit wasn't too attached to my curls. Or that he'd be willing to wait till they grew back.

I hid the burner. Nobody's business where. Probably not nearly as thrilling as most people will think, but at any rate, it is a trade secret of sorts, and besides, I might need to hide it there again. With it safely hidden, I continued walking between sidewalk and facade, past two probably active narc factories of some sort—from the smell. Then down around the corner, past a couple warehouses that were probably not full of stolen goods, that being just my imagination.

That was when I saw the broom come flying in, under the upper terrace and between the columns. I followed in the same direction. And found myself on a side street full of what looked like private houses, except that private houses normally don't have guards at the door. And very few of them have neon signs in the windows, advertising all kinds of brews. Bars, I thought. Bordellos. And perhaps the occasional lair—those being the ones whose guards wore full broomer leathers. You see, up there, on a broom, it gets pretty damn cold with the wind whipping around you, and for all the materials available to us, nothing QUITE keeps the cold out like leather.

Also, there were girls on the street, some in about what I was wearing, which meant that other than my hair—and that could be a weird fashion statement, for all anyone knew—I could pass. I started walking along the sidewalk, putting a little roll in my walk, so that customers would know that I was up for business. And I hoped someone would bite soon. After all, I didn't want anyone to think I was trying to setup as an independent. Not in a place where there were so many houses devoted to the business.

But I also had to snag the right customer, see? So I cooled it when a couple of men who looked like local semi-legal laborers looked at me, and waited till the right prey came along. Fortunately he did just as my neck was starting to prickle.

He being a tall blond man, beefy . He was wearing brown full broomer leathers—the jumpsuit slightly open at the chest to reveal blond hair. The patch near his left shoulder read
Narc, Sack or Powerpack. Nobody rides for free.
I smiled at him and licked my lips and undulated my hips thinking that he was about to get the full meaning of that last saying.

It brought him to a complete halt in front of me. I don't think he'd been shopping, till what was in the shop window caught his eye. Most broomers—of whatever class—don't pay for sex. They have their own women, usually lair followers, although many of the broomer lairs do not allow a woman to ride her own broom. But then again, there were all women lairs—normally referred to as Amazons—where the males were treated as arm candy, if they were noticed at all. One of the funniest air battles I'd ever seen had been between the Wicked Witches, an Amazon Lair, and the Lavender Buzzers, a male lair who were not particularly interested in women. They had both ambushed a drug transport truck at the same time, then proceeded to battle each other while it got away. The Brooms of Doom—my own Lair—had just stood aside and watched, while trying not to get wrenched muscles from uncontrolled laughter. We were more of the fight in a bar than the stealing type.

At any rate, this broomer had just decided that whatever he had waiting back at the lair for him, he wanted what I was selling. As I stopped and gave him the minimal inclination of the head that meant I knew he was looking and I wasn't averse, he grinned. "So . . . what are you going for?"

I wasn't sure what he meant, but I smiled back and said, "Buy me a meal and we can cuddle." This wasn't intentional or fully thought through, except that the smell of greasy spoon cooking from the places we were passing was making my stomach twist with hunger. So I thought I'd better take care of that too.

He raised an eyebrow, quizzically. "Amateur?"

Prepared to run if it turned out he was an enforcer for one of the houses, I wiggled. "One time only. I'm just hungry."

His grin got wider. "Got any eating place in mind?"

"Anywhere will do." Frankly, I would have felt bad if he'd taken me to a relatively nice place for this area. If he'd paid for something like a steak, I might have had to run away and leave him unmolested. But fortunately, he was trying to get as much bang as possible for as little buck as could be, so he took me to a soup place.

Either the soup—mostly algae of various kinds—was exceptionally good or I was starving, because I had two bowls before I slowed down.

And then he lead me out of there and to where he
parked his broom
. I had done my calculations. If he'd left his broom at his lair, I would have to go with him home—or convince him to go home, my being too shy to bundle in a lair—because I didn't think I was in a condition to battle a whole lair.

Fortunately, I was in luck. He took me to his place, which was a micro-apartment sliced out of one of the bigger houses. And where the first thing I noticed on coming in was his broom, propped up near the door, next to a ratty bed and rattier chair.

While he was closing the door, I got the burner out, so that when he turned, he found himself facing it, pointed squarely at his forehead.

His eyes went wide. "Whoa there, sweet thing. Where did you get that from?"

"My armpit," I said. "Strip."

This brought a unique look of confusion to his face. "But . . . you don't need to point a burner at me . . ."

I shifted the place I was pointing the burner at. Less lethal but far more personal. "Ah ah funny. Strip. And don't even think of trying anything."

I don't know if it was the look in my eyes, or the sheer unlikelihood of the situation that subdued him. One feint towards me caused me to stop aside very fast, then run a burner ray so close to his—by then naked—arm that he must have felt his arm hair curl. "The next one makes you sing soprano the rest of your life. Now bundle your clothes and your broom, open the door and set them outside."

He obeyed. From the look on his face, he might still have been thinking that it was some sort of fun and games. I waved him aside with the burner. "Sit. On your bed."

He did. Which is when I used my special speed to run all the way out the door, ducking to pick up the clothes and broom and boots and then around a labyrinth of streets, taking random turns, until I stopped in the narrow space between two burned-out buildings.

There I pulled on the leathers. They were large on me, as were the boots. To wear the boots I had to wad up a bunch of pamphlets someone had abandoned near a pole. They seemed to be a discourse on the evils of drugs.

The leathers smelled funky, but were practically sterile by comparison to the bio-hazard ship. I could live with them. Besides, all my shots for vd were up to date.

Minutes later, I was on the broom—a crappy model, but serviceable—and airborne over the ocean, headed for Daddy Dearest's house.

It was around the island and I had to fly so as not to get caught in the traffic control sensor—that is, keeping either too low or too high to trigger their attempts at identifying the unidentified blip. This wasn't difficult, though, as I was used to doing it anyway, and the habit came back without effort.

It meant over the city I flew high enough to be in the range where the scanners didn't pay too much attention because if any flyers chose to go that high they were on their own and the Seacity traffic control had no responsibility for their safety.

A lot of intercontinental transport flew at that level, anyway, because it was almost the only traffic up there, and if you were careful you didn't hit each other, and it got you there faster, for which most long-flyers got a bonus.

It required pulling the hood up on the jacket, slapping the oxygen mask on and breathing from the tank attached to the broom. And let me tell you, if I thought that the leathers smelled funky, the mask managed to smell even funkier. I was truly glad my vd shots were up to date. On the other hand, the mask and hood made me anonymous. Or perhaps not entirely, since at least two other broomers flashed me greeting signs. I flashed them back "hello" moving my right hand quickly in relatively innocuous universal broomer language. I wondered if this all-brown leather getup, with the bright patch on the shoulder was the attire of some specific lair, and prayed that whichever lair it was there were no lair wars going on involving it. Which was sort of hoping that water wouldn't be wet.

On the good side, I found my burner, stashed into the belt of the leathers, a great comfort. Forget diamonds or dogs—a girl or boy's best friend is always a high-powered weapon.

But I found no reason to use it until I flew near daddy's side of the island. Here I had to be very, very careful.

I'd never specifically asked, but I was fairly sure that Daddy-Dearest had trigger alarms for flyers approaching the house. I would have. It stood to reason if one were so afraid of invasion by sea as to make one's approach a forbidding cliff, then one would also be afraid of invasion by air, which could come at you in just as many numbers, and make defense just as impossible.

If I could think of the need for defense from the air, so could he.

The way the mansion was located, left only one other option. It sat at the highest levels of the isle, sprawling and classically comfortable. On the one side, it faced a sheer, forbidding cliff that ended in rather deep sea. The cliff was coated in dimatough, so it was as smooth as a mirror and much harder to cut. Though it could—as I remembered Kit doing when he climbed the ship I was trying to steal—be melted by a concentrated burner jet close up.

On the other side, it had a ramp, that climbed slowly from the restored lowest-level neighborhoods nearby and onto the front door.

Going by that ramp was the only option. It was also suicidal. I hadn't yet reached the point where I was so tired of life that I wished to forfeit it by giving daddy a bead on me for a very long time, as I climbed that slope. There was no way—no matter that I was wearing borrowed leathers, and even if I kept my mask on, that someone in daddy's never-ending retinue would not recognize my gait or the way I stood. Besides, approaching the mansion in full illegal broomer's attire could be compared to slathering oneself in bacon before sauntering into a tiger's den.

That however was the only way to get in. Unless I did it my way. The highly improbable, possibly insane route.

Right. I knew which one to choose.

I approached the Sinistra mansion from the sea and, as I got closer, I flew lower and lower, so that by the time I got near the mansion I was flying so low my feet in the too-big boots were grazing salt water.

As long as the broom worked, it was all right if I froze halfway to death in wet leathers—or went naked. It beat the alternative, which was Kit dying in whatever hell hole Daddy Dearest had stashed him.

So I flew yet lower, till the broom was barely above water—and that only because I wasn't absolutely sure this model would survive a good dunking. Brooms weren't made openly except in the rogue—and mobile—sea city of Shangri-la. Every other system in the world forbid them strictly. Which meant that they were smuggled in and cost a small fortune, particularly the good models, which were as solid-state and water-tight as my handy-dandy burner.

The cheaper source of brooms, though, and one often resorted to by less pecunious broomers was the brooms put in flyers to be used as emergency exit devices if something went seriously wrong while you were airborne. Those thus adapted—depending on the flyer they were taken from, which was usually in some flyer graveyard—were often barely air resistant much less water resistant.

Flying at near-sea level, I assessed the wall. It was sheer and impregnable. Like a spaceship. I remembered what Kit had done to climb the near-mirror-like side of the collector ship on dock, and I saw absolutely no reason not to replicate it here.

I started by turning off the oxygen and removing the mask. It's not that oxygen and burners don't mix, it's that when they do mix the resulting explosion tends to catch the attention of everyone in the next mile or so.

Once that was done, I clipped the broom to my belt—while still straddling it—so that as I got off it I didn't have to worry about its falling into the depths of the sea.

Then I burned four holes—two at foot level or close enough, and then two further up about where I estimated my hands would go. Well, holes might be a form of expression, since they were actually more like four shallow, concave depressions in the wall—but never mind. Deep enough to allow me to rest my hands and feet in them.

I gave them a few seconds to cool off—no use cooking my hands—then flew up to where my left foot was level with the foot hold. Stuck my left foot in, my left hand above, reached down with my right and turned off the broom, then dismounted and stuck my foot on the right foothold.

The handholds weren't at exactly the right height, but it was no problem, as I found I needed intermediary holds, about half way up my body, for my feet to go into, and then further up for my hands. My first assumption that the hand-holds would become foot-holds presupposed that I could leap up by my whole body length each time and hold onto nothing.

I'm not going to say it was easy—it wasn't. Once or twice I put my hand into a still-hot hole and lost skin. Another couple of times my foot slipped and I was left dangling from my ragged fingernails. The only reason I had the nerve to do it at all, particularly as I got halfway up the wall and above, was that if I fell I could always use the broom to avoid crashing headlong into the sea below. Of course, I knew very well that if I used the broom, the motor would likely be enough to set off daddy's alarms. At least that was my bet. It was quite possible this broom's low energy consumption and low vibration would be below the threshold daddy had set, but I couldn't know that for sure, and I wouldn't bet on it. With as many illegal broomers as there were on Syracuse, it would be foolish for him to discount brooms as means of attack.