DarkShip Thieves (47 page)

Everything went well. Almost too well. I'm not used to things going without glitches, and when they do, I start looking around for the trap. I've found that I'm always right.

I wasn't looking for trouble, and I can't say I was disappointed I got Kit out of Never Never with relative ease. But my anxiety grew every time something went well or smoothly.

I tensed as we left through the membrane, tensed some more as I managed to fly back , through the water, to the outside.

Kit had panicked under the water, and for just a moment I wished I'd remembered to bring Morpheus, only I doubted I had Nat's ability for holding a tied up man on a broom, and in fact it wasn't something I was sure I wanted to acquire.

As we flew above the water, sparkling silver in the morning sun, Kit was so quiet that I was afraid he was seriously hurt—though I hadn't seen what looked like more than scrapes and bruises—or perhaps that the glasses weren't enough to shield his eyes. But then he mind said,
If we could take a tenth of the water we can see to Eden. We'd be so rich.
And I was reassured. My ever-practical love remained himself.

Ettiene had taken us to where he'd hidden the air to space and seen us aboard, and managed to say goodbye without kissing me, which was good because the minute Kit saw him, I swear he started ruffling feathers he didn't have and looking like were it not for a few generations of civilization, he would be pounding his chest to scare away the intruder.

The air to space was comfortable, and I hoped Ettiene got it back. We docked it where we'd been told, and got back into the Cathouse which was lovely and fresh scrubbed. And I'd been happy, yes, but I also felt that odd prickling at the back of my neck. Trouble was on the way, I was sure of it. And yet, was I only reacting to the stress of the last few days.

Kit had flown the Cathouse out of Circum without anyone even trying to follow us.

Sitting in the Cat Cabin, even if he had managed to lose a lot of weight and have a huge bruise on the side of his face, Kit looked like himself, and very, very happy, as his fingers played on the keyboard.

"Go get the fresher," he said.

"Are you implying I smell?" I asked.

"No. But if you go now, you can be all clean to direct me through the powertrees. I figure since we're coming back late, we might as well take some powerpods."

"You're just afraid they'll send us back if we don't."

"Kath might," he said, somberly. "She'll be pretty pissy by now."

Undeniable. Though I suspected she would forgive us all the moment little brother came back alive and well.

I hit the fresher. The funny thing is even our clothes were where we'd left them. I guessed they'd just radiation scrubbed the whole ship and hadn't got around to doing anything with the contents. Suited me fine. I got a nice blue dress that Kit liked, and hoped it would compensate for the loss of hair. I tried not to look at myself in the mirror on the way to the fresher. Couldn't be helped. My head had just the littlest of stubble coming in. The best I could do for Kit right now would be to tie a scarf on my head.

I didn't, though, as I came out of the fresher. Just hoped Kit could get used to me like this until the hair grew back.

In the hallway just outside the Cat Cabin, I said, "I hope you can get used to—"

And stopped as I entered the Cat Cabin. Because Daddy Dearest was there. Pointing a burner at Kit's head. And Kit was moving like a robot and looking like a wax dummy.

My father turned but not so completely he'd look sight of Kit and faced me with a wide smile. "About damn time Athena."

"I see you wanted to see us off, Daddy Dearest," I said.

He glared at me. "Depends what you mean by off. I knew it was you when I heard Keeve had disappeared. I gave my orders. Your little friends won't get to kill my century-old friends. Not this time
daughter.
Not ever. By now all your friends are dead. But I knew you'd be coming here. And your friend Boulanger . . ." He made a gesture. "Clumsy child, nothing more. Not a tenth the man
his father
was."

He accented the familial relationship words with ironical inflection as though daring me to say something. I wasn't about to. I also wasn't about to give my friends a thought. Oh, I hoped Father wasn't speaking the truth, and if I knew the bastard, there was a good chance he wasn't. He was just trying to confuse me. But at any rate, it didn't matter. It was between us now. Not the broomers.

He grinned at me, as if he knew what was going on in my head. "Well played, girly. Not even a growl back? You've grown up. Too bad that will all go to waste. I can't afford to lose you now. There aren't enough of us, of the old school to restart the genetic program from scratch. So you'll come to me to Earth, where you'll be a good girl and we'll finish what we'd started in the space cruiser. And then we'll bring our kind back, in glorious splendor."

I glared at him. "Our kind?"

He lost his temper like that. Controlling himself had never been his strong suit. "The Mules. You know damn well. Don't think you can toy with me."

"Ew. You're genetically my brother," I said, pretending I didn't know what his ultimate plans for me were.

He glared, but he kept an eye on Kit and he never moved the aim from Kit's neck. "We are superior to the rest of humans. We owe it to the Earth to populate it with the best possible humans. Cheer up. Your children will inherit the Earth."

"No thank you. I've had enough. Enough of Earth and enough of you."

"Ah . . . no species loyalty. Not that I expected better of you, girl. You've been a disappointment from the beginning. You were the result of centuries of research and I had high hopes. We tried to reproduce the miracle that created you, but we couldn't. The anti-reproduction triggers in our genes destroyed every other female embryo we created, even those cloned from you." He grinned at what must have been my ghastly look of surprise. "Oh, it was easy to get material during your medical exams, your medical crises. But none of them took, so you're all we got. And I must take over your body and make it do what it must do for the betterment of mankind."

"You're not part of mankind. And what part of replacing it is betterment?"

"Oh, we won't replace all of them. We'll need servants after all." Casually, gently, he rested his free right hand on the back of Kit's neck. Kit gave the impression of flinching from the touch without moving, not even minimally. "Move it, Athena. Ahead of me. I have an air-to-space ready to go. You come with me now, and I'll let your play friend go back home without hurting him."

I didn't believe it for a minute. Kit mustn't have either, because he said,
Don't you dare. I'll blow my brains out the moment you leave the Cathouse.

His words in my mind were so forceful there was no room to doubt him.
Don't worry,
I told Kit, as I made as if to go ahead of Daddy Dearest. My mouth was dry and I felt my mind dip into panic. I didn't trust the unholy son of a bitch, not further than I could throw him. And I had no intentions of throwing him. But there would be a moment, when he turned, to take me out of the room, that his burner wouldn't be on Kit.

I couldn't understand why Kit hadn't tried anything already—except that as I looked over my shoulder I realized, from the flickers on the screen that we'd steered into the powertrees. Father had waited till we were there. Which meant I couldn't count on Kit.

Don't worry
, I told Kit.
I'll handle it.

"Move it, further," my father said. "I'm not following that close to you." And then, casually, he turned and raised his hand and brought the burner butt down on Kit's cheek, cutting a groove from which blood flowed, amid the calico beard.

Kit's eyes reflected on the screens maddened by fear and anger.

It's just that Father miscalculated, but when turned to get to Kit, he turned away from me for a moment. And he didn't have his burner pointed at Kit, either.

Long enough.

I threw myself through the air and grabbed at his burner, I tore his aim away from Kit, as his finger pressed the trigger. The beam flew at the ceiling.

And then I was fighting, roaring, mad with fear, insane with protective, jealous love, caring only for keeping my father away from Kit.

My father was stronger than I'd ever thought. Stronger and better trained. His nails gauged at my skin. His feet tripped me. His hands grabbed mine, immobilized me.

Even wounded, even old, even insane, he was more than a match for me.

This close in, I couldn't use my ballet moves. I could try, but they wouldn't work—I was so close to him.

Father switched his hold to my neck, tightened his hands around my throat and pushed me up against the wall of the Cathouse.

"You stupid bitch," he said. "What did you think you were going to do? So glad to find a boyfriend? So glad you can't think when you're around him." my father grinned at me, his face totally inhuman. "Did I ever tell you what my specialty was, in the days before the turmoils,
daughter
?"

I couldn't breathe and the world was growing dim before my eyes.

"I was an assassin, created to enforce Mule rule over the stupid humans. An assassin, Athena. Designed to kill men and Mules. That's where you got your fighting ability
dear
. Your speed, your strength, your sense of direction and your mechanical ability. I was designed with them so I could carry out missions in hostile territory. Alone. And you got them accidentally, through my genes. But I'm the original, you're just the copy. But you are the copy and if your bio had managed to take you with him, he'd find that you turn out just like dear old dad . . . Isn't that funny?"

Nothing was funny. Sad. Shocking. Terrible. Not funny. The world was slipping away.

My hands were tearing at my own neck, trying to pry my father's fingers away.

And my senses were running away from me, dimming, disappearing.

As from a long distance off, I heard, "And now, when you pass out, we'll kill your boyfriend and we'll go back to the flyer before we hit anything."

Flailing, feeling my life ebb away like water among rocks, I was aware of Kit's foot—as though it were my foot—slowly sliding along the floor, towards the lever that turned off the internal gravity of the Cathouse—a function left over from its days as a training ship, when it was needed to train recruits in null g,
just in case
.

We weren't mind-linked. But perhaps subconsciously my mind reached for his, in fear of death. I felt the lever beneath his boot, felt it slide and then click to.

And then the nul g kicked, and my father and I floated to the ceiling, his hands still around my neck.

But I had trained in Nul g with Kit. We'd mock-fought each other in nul g, for exercise. Kit liked the freedom of nul g and he thought I needed to practice in it.

My father struggled to regain footing. I twisted his fingers away from my neck.

I understood now why the other Mules hadn't taken him to Eden with him. He was a killer. How much was I like him? Was I destined, infallibly, to become a copy of the murderous bastard?

I surely felt like killing. Like rending him to pieces. I felt as blood-thirsty as Nat. I wanted to kill him slowly and over weeks. I wanted to hear him scream.

Both of us had lost our burners in the melee, but I'd always been more at home with fists and feet.

I kicked at him, and I twisted and wrenched at him, and I used all my ballet moves, unfettered, all the more graceful for the nul g.

Given the advantage of nul-g, I soon had him cornered against the bulkhead, and I had my hands around his scrawny neck. I would kill him now, I thought.

But there were his eyes looking at me, and in them I read utter terror and complete defeat. He was bleeding from the corner of his mouth and his forehead. Blood stained the shoulder of his tunic. His eyes were dull with pain.

And I thought he was a killer. Designed to kill. Was I that much like him that I could kill remorselessly? In cold blood? With my bare hands?

Kit kicked the gravity and we fell to the ground. I gathered myself up, painfully.

And Kit was standing by us, holding my father up. "We're in a corridor," he said. "We're safe for now. On automatic pilot."

"I can't kill him," I said, and half-opened my hands. I looked at Kit and sighed. It would be more truthful to say I didn't want to kill him. I wanted to think of myself as different from him. Not made to kill.

"No one is asking you to." Kit shrugged. "He forced us onto the energy trees. You piloted through them before. He should be able to. We'll put him in the air-to-space he brought in. If he has the same capacity of movement you have, he can do it. If he makes it out of here, he's earned his life. And then, on Earth, we'll let him square it with your friend Ettiene. I doubt he'll have an easy match."

I agreed. Who'd have thought of Ettiene that way?

Kit dragged my father out to the bay. "You may get in that air-to-space and fly away," Kit said. "In two minutes we will open the outer door. If you don't fly away, you'll be spaced. Without the air to space."

He dropped my father into the bay and walked back and lowered the lever that slid the door closed.

My father seemed to wake up, as the door was halfway closed. He lurched at us.

"Three hundred years," he yelled. "You won't destroy it all now. Jarl betrayed me once. I won't have it again."

He grabbed at the two halves of the door and shoved hard. They still slid together, closer and closer. My father refused to give up. He kept pushing, even as the halves of the door squeezed him between them.

It all took no longer than a painfully drawn breath, but in my mind, replayed, it lasts forever—a slow agony of fear and struggle.

Kit fumbled for the lever to halt the closing, but he was just slightly slower than normal—tired and confused by being hit with the butt of the burner.

And I was exhausted. I tried to jump towards the door. Too late.