Ghost Ship (20 page)

“There is a utility ’fresher behind the door immediately across from you,”
Bechimo
said. “All-duty coveralls are in that room also.”

They would do.

“Thanks,” she said, scanning the opposite wall for a pressure plate, which would mark the door—and finding it all at once: a kickplate, set near the floor. She pressed her foot against it, and the door slid open, revealing a tiny but perfectly adequate ’fresher.

“Captain, there are items demanding your attention,”
Bechimo
began as Theo touched the ’fresher’s “on” switch. She frowned, turned around, and looked at the far right-hand corner of the ceiling, from which the voice seemed to emanate.

“My attention is all yours after I get cleaned up,” she said, “a process that I’d prefer to undertake
alone
.”

“There is no crew on board, Captain. You are alone.”

Theo sighed. “Am I talking to myself?”

“No, Captain.”

“Then I’m not alone.”

“I don’t understand.”

Theo sighed again.

“Can you withdraw your attention from this room while I’m getting cleaned up?” she asked. After Anlingdin, and especially after Culture Club, she didn’t have much body shyness left, but she needed to think, and she didn’t want to be startled out of her thoughts by a sudden announcement or question from the ship.

“Can you withdraw your attention from your left foot?”
Bechimo
countered.

Theo opened her mouth, closed it, and nodded.

“Sure I can. I know it’s there and most times I don’t need to know anything else. If the footing gets rough, and I need to pay closer attention, or if I take a misstep and break my ankle—those alerts will get to me. In the meantime, I can pretty safely ignore it.”

There was a pause, then a subdued sounding, “I understand. When will it please the Captain to accept a status report?”

“We can meet on the bridge when I’m done here. I have a couple things I think we need to talk about, too. Will that satisfy?”

“Captain, it will. I am withdrawing my attention.”

“Thanks.”

* * *

The all-dutyalls were big enough to take her and Kara, too. Theo considered not wearing them, but one look at her clothes as they emerged from the cleaner in the ’fresher room changed her mind. Both the sweater and the pants would have to be recycled. Her boots were all right, and her jacket, absent some additional scars. Theo ran her thumb over a new gouge along the mid-right shoulder—that one could’ve been bad, if she hadn’t been wearing space leather.

Which brought her back to the topic she’d been dancing lightly around, all the time she’d been in the ’fresher.

She, Theo Waitley, daughter of Scholar Kamele Waitley, raised on the safe, nonviolent world of Delgado, had killed a pilot and her ship, and may her grandmother never hear of it!

Every coin has two sides,
Father said from memory, and Theo nodded to herself. The flipside to this particular coin was that people were actively trying to capture, if not kill
her
, whether because she was the pilot of
Arin’s Toss
, or because she’d been carrying a pin with Korval’s clan sign on it, or—or because she had a key to
Bechimo
.
Only look at what had happened to Win Ton, because
he
had a key to
Bechimo
!

“The trouble is, Theo,” she told herself, rolling up the all-duty-all’s legs so she could walk, “there’s just too many people who
could
be after you, and not enough data about who
is
after you.”

Unless it was all of the above.

On which cheerful thought she went out to the bridge to talk with her ship.

- - - - -

The ship—the marvelous ship that had eluded the Department’s grasp for so very long. The ship had been sighted.

More! The ship had been instrumental in the abduction of a pilot properly in Departmental custody; a pilot very much of interest, flying the elusive
Arin’s Toss
, known to belong to the lately and strangely absent player, Crystal Energy Consultants.

Not content with succoring the pilot, the ship had also stolen
Arin’s Toss
from beneath the very noses of several operatives of the Department, and destroyed the corsair and pilot that had risen in pursuit.

All, however, was not lost to debacle and disgrace.

For the pilot—First Class Theo Waitley—had been wounded, and, wounded, had bled. Her blood had been analyzed, so that the Department might seek her again, and more fully.

So it was discovered that First Class Waitley, pilot of
Arin’s Toss
was genetically—

Korval.

- - - - -

She’d compiled a list in her head while she was in the ’fresher, but the eerie spacescape displayed on the screens drove out all questions but one.

“Where are we?”

“At coordinates known to myself. Good shift, Captain. I am pleased to see your health so much improved.”

“Thank you,” she said, still staring at the screens and the comprehensive
nothing
displayed there. “I’m grateful for the use of your facilities. And for your care,” she added, deliberately looking away from the screens to the empty bridge. She sighed and turned on her heel, fingers forming the sign for
location?

“
Bechimo
, where are
you
?”

That wasn’t one of her prepared questions, either, but she couldn’t keep on staring at a vent, or at the screens.

“I enclose you, Captain.”

“Right.” Theo bit her lip, then walked to the pilot’s chair and sat down, bringing her feet up to rest on the seat, and wrapping her arms around her knees. “Can you,” she said, “speak from my Number Six screen? It’ll give me something to focus on, like a face.”

And make me feel less like I’ve gone off my head,
she added silently.

There was a pause, so long that she thought she’d offended, then Number Six began to glow a soft blue. Theo nodded.

“Thank you.”

“It is my pleasure, Captain.” The voice that came out of the screen’s speaker was crisper, and less wistful.

Theo nodded. “You had a status report, you said?”

“Captain, I do. Ship’s general status is excellent, with no harm taken from the recent assault visited upon us by pirates. The mere-ship
Arin’s Toss
is in the large hold, and reports itself in good order. We have supplies enough to sustain you for approximately nine Standard Months, by which time, we may, with caution, risk a supply run. I have taken the liberty of unlocking ship’s archives to you. All is in readiness for the ceremony of bonding, which may commence at your order.”

Theo stared at the flowing blues within Number Six screen, listening to the echoes of
Bechimo
’s voice. When she was sure she’d heard everything correctly, she took a breath and inclined her head.

“I have received the report, and I have questions.”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Yes.” She frowned, then decided that reverse order was just as good as any other.

“This ceremony of bonding . . . isn’t something I’m familiar with. Can you explain?”

“Yes, Captain. The Builders wrote that the ship and captain must commit, each to the other, and be bound together as one in purpose. In this manner, the ship may act fully for the Captain, and the Captain will enjoy completeness with the ship.”

It sounded, Theo thought, through a kind of breathless panic, like a Carfellian oath-pairing, which was dissolved only upon the death of one of the partners. Or like the little bit she’d read about lifemating, though without the sharing of thought and emotion that Father and Val Con insisted on.

In other words, it sounded . . . absolutely terrifying.

“Is there,” she said carefully, “a description of this ceremony and the Builders’ notes pertinent to it, in the archives that you have unlocked to me?”

“Captain, there is.”

“I will study those files before we proceed with the ceremony.”

There was a pause, the blues darkening toward indigo in the screen, then something that sounded very much like a sigh.

“The Captain will of course wish to inform herself. It serves the ship well, that the Captain is both cautious and serious.”

Well, thought Theo, that was generous, even with the sigh, and one item from the status report dealt with in good order. Next . . .

“I’m pleased to learn that we’re so well supplied, but I’m puzzled. It sounds as if you plan to . . .
hide
—here?—for nine Standard Months? Do I understand that correctly?”

“Yes, Captain. This is a secure location. Never have I met a mere-ship here. Occasionally, an object may Jump in, but none have arrived with intent, or under the control of a living pilot.”

Theo frowned suspiciously. This sounded too much like the stories elder students liked to tell the newbies: ships coming out of Jump three hundred years after they’d gone missing, all crew at stations, dead. Or the
Jamie Dawson
, holed and crewed by skeletons, that had been reported by sane and seasoned pilots at the location of space battles across a hundred Standards.

Or
Ride the Luck
, come blazing in from Galaxy Nowhere, to turn the battle at Nev’Lorn.

Theo took a slow, careful breath.

“What kinds of objects,” she asked, neutrally, “and how did they achieve Jump?”

“Hardware and shred, most usually,”
Bechimo
said. “Ships, several times, holed or otherwise incomplete. Ceramic couplers. Wire. Once, a teapot.”

Theo frowned, wondering if
Bechimo
had a sense of humor, or if she was more unstable than Jeeves had guessed.

“A teapot.”

“Yes, Captain. A teapot, in pristine condition. After I had tested it to be sure it contained no harmful radiation or substances that might be poisonous to crew, I placed it in the family galley.”

“Really. Is it there now?”

“Captain, it is. Shall I fetch it to you?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Theo said, trying for the tone of cool unconcern that Kamele used when she thought someone was having fun at her expense. “I’ll want a tour later; you can show me the teapot then.”

“Very well, Captain. Regarding your query concerning the origins of these objects, my hypothesis is that these bits and pieces were separated from ships in Jump. Perhaps those vessels entered transition using unstable equations; perhaps they were improperly balanced; perhaps they were seeking to enter a state—by which I mean, this continuum that we inhabit—from an incompatible beginning state.”

“So you think that these objects are coming in from another galaxy?”

That wasn’t completely impossible
, she thought. She’d read that there was sometimes bleed between galaxies, when they passed through each other. Rocks and trace gases, mostly. If anybody’d ever found a teapot, they’d kept quiet about it in the literature, for which Theo couldn’t blame them.

“Another galaxy, no, Captain. It is my belief that these objects are the remnants of a catastrophic event in another universe.”

Another—universe.
All right,
Theo thought,
that’s definitive
. The ship was pulling her leg.

“You’ll have to show me the math for that,” she said. “Right now, though, we’ve got some priorities to straighten out.”

She put her feet flat on the floor, pushed the sleeves of the all-duty-all’s up her arms, and faced Number Six squarely.

“You’ve been in contact with the
Toss
, you said?”

“Yes, Captain. I have pulled and reviewed systems reports, and taken receipt of the ship’s status update. The mere-ship has taken no harm and may be released on autopilot, at your command.”

Released on autopilot, was it?

Theo shook her head. “That’s a wanted vessel, and she’s not mine; she belongs to Uncle. I have an obligation to see her safely returned to him. But before that, I wonder if you can convince the
Toss
to open to me. My key was destroyed on Tokeoport, and I need to board.”

Blue and indigo and silver swirled inside Screen Six. It almost seemed to Theo that she saw a face there—a reflection, glimpsed between glass and curtain.

“Begging the Captain’s pardon, there is no need to board the mere-ship.
Bechimo
is better equipped to protect you, in case of another attack by pirates. We are well supplied and—”

“Actually,” Theo interrupted, hearing what sounded like an edge of panic in the crisp voice, “there are a couple of very compelling reasons for me to board
Arin’s Toss
. One, my clothes are on board, as well as my books and some . . . personal family records. Two, I need to see if there are any messages from my employer. I missed a delivery, and I’m pretty sure that didn’t escape his attention.”

The blues swirled, silent.

“There are clothes in stores,”
Bechimo
said, sulkily.

“But not
my
clothes,” Theo pointed out. “And you probably don’t have the data key my father gave me the last time I saw him.”

Was that the glint of an eye, there behind a translucent swirl of silver-blue?

“No, Captain; I do not have that.”

“I need to board
Arin’s Toss
,” Theo said, keeping her voice matter-of-fact. “That’s priority one.”

Silence. The swirling colors in Number Six screen drifted and stilled.

Theo took a breath, remembering the taste of lemon in the air during the battle against the corsair, the sudden sharpening of her wits and her reactions, though she’d been, as she was beginning to understand, badly hurt. Very badly hurt. And if
Bechimo
could introduce stimulants into ship’s air, then she could also introduce a sedative, or a hypnotic.

Theo felt chilled, suddenly, though the ambient temp was a little warmer than she generally preferred.
Trapped,
she thought, and shook her head.

Think, Theo
.

Bechimo
could have kept Win Ton here, but she’d let him go.
Bechimo
wanted a captain, though it was far from Theo to understand why. A captain, to order things maybe? To command?

To command
.

Theo stood, and nodded at Number Six screen.