DarkShip Thieves (46 page)

Just as we came to a door that looked like the end of the line, I wondered what if Max—well, the new Max—had changed his room? What if—

But Nat was opening the door and stepping out into the thick carpet of the room. Nat must have been part cat, because he stepped out in utter soundlessness, and had sent a dart off from the dart gun before my eyes had adjusted. Someone—a slim blond woman—sat up at the odd sigh that escaped the sleeping man when the dart hit him. She looked into the darkness with wide open eyes and opened her mouth.

The tranquilizer dart hit her before she could scream. She fell, immediately, like a bag filled with sawdust.

The men worked silently. They had brought ropes and stick fast tape, and before you knew it, they had the Good Man trussed up, rolled in a blanket, and convenient handles improvised out of stickfast tape.

I won't say it was easy taking him back. Of course it wasn't. The anti-grav wells were the pits. I had to help them balance the man, who, but for being warm, looked like a corpse. As we got to the cave and Nat went about, matter-of-factly binding himself to our victim so they could both ride one broom, I said, "Are you sure you didn't give him the wrong dosage of tranq."

"Oh he should be so lucky."

Right. There definitely were things I didn't need to know.

By the time we got back to the lair the Good Man was starting to stir, but by the time he woke up, we had him properly tied and firmly attached to a rather large and solid dimatough chair in the innermost room—the same room where I'd repaired the brooms.

Meanwhile, Nat had fretted about the possibility that the bimbo in bed with not-Max had seen something that would lead to us. "I'd have killed her, you know, but I was afraid the burner was going to cause a fire and bring people on us."

Had I been that unconcerned with the life of bystanders, before going to Eden? Perhaps. All I could think is that I didn't want to justify it to Kit. And I'd better not tell him I seemed to have called forth the living incarnation of death, either. I didn't think he would like that.

First thing the Good Man did when he came through was scream his head off. Nat ignored him, sitting across from him and smoking patiently. Ettiene and I let him scream. The more noise he made, the less strength he would have to oppose us.

I don't know how long he screamed. I was trying to think of the things to ask. How to ask.

I needn't have bothered. I simply didn't get a look in. You see, Nat had apparently been thinking of
small bones in the body that you can break easily
and
curiously painful things one can do with a lighted cigarette.

After half an hour, Ettiene left. I could hear him wretch in the fresher next door. At forty five minutes, the Good Man sang. Interestingly, he sang without even the promise that pain would stop. I guess Nat didn't like to lie.

As soon as I had the details about where Kit was held, I left the room, almost running. Ettiene, very pale, was waiting in the hallway. We'd chased everyone else from this part of the lair before we started, but we went all the way to the other extreme, near the entrance, where we could almost not hear a staccato of screams, followed by some rather curious sounds, the provenance of which I didn't want to know.

"He really . . . Nat . . ."

"Yes," I said. "He felt his skull. After you left. There are . . . scars."

"Uh . . . your . . . did he tell you the location of your husband?"

"Yes."

"So . . . are we going to rescue him?"

"Yes. The problem is how. You see, the facility is under water. Carved in dimatough."

Well, at least it explained why I was able to contact Kit, at least intermittently. You see, the facility, code named Never-Never, because whoever went in there was never seen or heard of again, was built into the very foundations of Syracuse Seacity, either nested in a bubble left over from the pouring of the city, or melted after the fact.

It was under water though not that deeply in—I guessed because it was easier to air that way.

"We could go in through the top," I said. We'd assembled in a new war room that Ettiene had arranged to be partitioned at the front. Nat had vanished with the Good Man and none of us was all that eager to find out where he had gone. Or what had happened to the Good Man or whatever remained of him. I remembered all too well what Nat had said about keeping him alive for days, and damned if I was going to grudge him his vengeance, but I also didn't need to think about it. This was clearly also Ettiene's idea, since he didn't even want to go to the room at the back.

We were all sitting on the floor, in a circle. All of us being about fifteen broomers, only two of them new, plus myself and Ettiene. Fuse had left his beloved explosives to come sit by my side, but I wasn't absolutely sure if he counted.

"We could," Ettiene said. "But if we do, we'll meet resistence full on, won't we?"

"Right," I said. The thing was, and Ettiene had pointed this out, that we had to move really fast. Oh, Nat was a fast bastard and, apparently, had cleaned up behind him, removing the sleeping dart that had lodged in the girl's neck. But we needed to get Kit out of there, and then both of us out to Circum Terra and out to Eden before someone realized that the Good Man Keeve was missing, and who had done it. Any delay could mean they moved Kit. Or they destroyed the Cathouse.

Oh, I'm sure there were other ships we could use, but none adapted for use by a Cat from Eden. And I didn't want to try to pilot the thing without Kit's special abilities. Plus, Eden might damn well blast us out of the sky as we approached. They damn well might. Collectively, they were as paranoid as I was.

"So . . . what if we go from the side?" I asked. From what Good Man Keeve had told me about the positioning of the facilities, they extended all the way to the edge, on the south side of the city, right by those cliffs that led up to Daddy Dearest's mansion. Under the water.

"Mmm. Could be done. Except we risk drowning whoever is in the lower levels, if it extends very far down."

I'd thought of how many levels there might be and I'd asked, though not for this purpose. "There are three levels," I said, but the underwater one is the lowest one, and depending on the type of puncture we make . . ." I was thinking. "There must be some way to make a hole and cover it, so that it doesn't immediately flood the place."

At that moment I became aware of Fuse, pulling on my sleeve. "Yes, Fuse?"

"Do you remember? I told you. The sewer repair. I stole one."

Clear as mud. "You stole a sewer?" And of course I didn't remember. I had been thinking of Daddy Dearest and of whatever was going on with that. I hadn't been thinking of sewers. Or repairs.

Fuse hissed out air like a peevish child. "No, Thena. A lot of Seacity sewers are access . . . access . . ." He lost the fight with his drooping mouth, but not without spraying a broad perimeter of spittle all around. "Are near the outside of the foundations, and it's easier to enter from the side. I watched them do it. To repair the sewer. You blow a shaped charge, and then you slap in a . . . a chamber, with two membranes." He looked at me, and must have seen complete, blank incomprehension. "Like an air lock. I stole it because I thought it was neat!"

We hadn't taken his word for it. Taking the word of a madman at a time was sort of my limit. I'd already filled that quota with Nat. So Ettiene and I had inspected the airlock chamber which fuse had stolen. I guess you could call it that. It was about six feet long, and wide enough to let a person pass, and it reminded me of nothing so much as a button hole. Inside there was a chamber, small enough to let one of us through at a time. We'd have to coordinate it.

"I'll have to call reinforcements," Ettiene said. "And I've . . . uh . . ."

We were standing outside Fuse's compartment, discussing plans, but he stopped and sighed.

"You've uh?"

"I've made enquiries about your ship."

"Oh, no," I said.

"Not officially," Ettiene said, quickly. "Never officially. I . . . have friends amid the harvesters. Well, they're my friends if I pay enough, you know how that goes."

I knew how that went.

"I went up for a visit couple of years ago," he said. "You see, I always wanted to go to space. So I went up, and looked around, and . . . well, they're willing to help for a little cash."

Wasn't that the way of all the worlds? And wasn't it a wonderful thing?

"Anyway, your ship was radiation cleaned, because they were . . . . you know, studying it. Not taking it apart yet, but studying how it works. So I paid someone to stock it. Air, water, food. I can't promise what the food will be, but it should be enough for your trip back."

I nodded. I didn't know what to say. I hadn't even thought of that, just thought that I wanted out of here and back to Eden. Good thing someone's brain was working.

"I'll have a surface to space ready for you to take to Circum. Do you think you can? You or . . . your husband? It's a fast one. Very small. You should be able to make it up there and dock in less than three hours, if you can pilot it accurately enough."

"Kit for sure," I said. "If his eyes and mind are working." I hadn't heard from him for a while, and my attempts at mind-touching met with complete shielding on his part. I could get no more than the sense that he was alive and . . . well, not well. That I couldn't get a sense of at all. "And if not . . . we'll figure it." He could always borrow my eyes and hands. Provided it wasn't a lethal wound, Eden had regeneration. And somehow, I doubted they would destroy his eyes. Not if they wanted him to do the same work Jarl had done. Or to try to understand it.

Suddenly, without warning, Ettiene had pulled me to him and was kissing me hard, teeth scraping teeth. I was so shocked it took me a moment to put a hand on his chest and push him back.

He smiled a little, not at all embarrassed. "I figured I was entitled to a goodbye kiss," he said. "If it weren't for that husband of yours . . ." He grinned. "Ah, well. Let's get the show on the road, shall we?"

That was how, before dawn had fully lit the sky, we were out, flying just above the water on near the cliffs just beneath Daddy Dearest's mansion.

Fuse flew ahead of us and down into the water, and I hoped—hoped—that the airlock would work. I didn't want to drown Kit. Ettiene was very nice, but hardly a consolation prize. The problem was that I was very much afraid without Kit I'd go as crazy as Nat had gone without Max.

Fuse dove down and moments later the water splashed up. I didn't see Fuse splash up with it, but he also didn't fly back up.

I couldn't wait, so I flew down, and there was the grey membrane, on the wall to the cliff. I also couldn't take it nicely, getting off the broom, to step through, so instead I rode through on the membrane, with a burner on each hand.

The airlock was dry and on the other side was a hallway with only a little water on the floor, and if Fuse had come in through here, who knew where he had gone, and what had happened to him, because there was a detachment of goons facing me.

I burned in a scything motion, aiming for the neck, because the body might be armored and heads exploding is only interesting as a figure of speech.

Kit, I'm here. Where are you? What level?

For a moment, there was no answer and I thought they'd moved him, I thought—

This level,
he said, having got the image of where I was from my mind. From his memory he sent me the image of which corridor to take, how to get to his cell how to get him out.

Be careful, love, I'm guarded.

Oh, I wouldn't expect anything else.

But not your father. He left, in a hurry, sometime ago.

I see,
I said. It was, in fact, clear as mud.

I flew down the hallway, followed by Jan and Ettiene. The other broomers were presumably either guarding access to this corridor or perhaps just causing random mayhem in other parts of the compound. While guarding the corridor would be the sane thing to do, these were broomers. If they were inclined to sanity, they'd get therapy, not shoot at things, hold up things and get people to pay them for protection. No.

I just had to hope we could make the best of what we had.

At some point Jan and Ettiene got ahead of me. By the time I got to the door at the end of the hallway, they'd already killed the two sentinels.

They were about to burn the genlock with their burners on high, but I decided to play a hunch. "Clones, remember?"

Jan looked startled, but lay his hand across it. And the door spread open. I don't think he had believed any of what had spread around the lair like wild fire—the whole thing except the fact that the Good Men were Mules. I saw belief and comprehension hit him like a mallet. I though he would be out for the count.

We must have been faster with the break in than I expected, because as we entered the room, Kit was chained to a desk. Literally chained to a desk, looking in baffled wonder at a holographic screen. I registered two things that made me feel immense relief—he seemed to be whole, and the light was turned down to the point where it was only slightly uncomfortable for him. Probably the lowest they could take it. I'd brought sun-protection goggles for him, of course, but it didn't look like—so far—his eyes were ruined.

The other things I noticed weren't so reassuring. There were two guards in there, one who swivelled to point his burner at me, and whom Ettiene burned where he stood.

The other guard, though, was good man Rainer, Jan's quasi-Father. He was punching at a com-button and screaming, "Repeat, what should I do with the prisoner."

A burner ray came over my shoulder. Jan had burned him where he stood. And then, as if nothing at all had happened, he helped me melt Kit's chains so that I could take him out of there.

Nat was going to be so disappointed. One less that he got to take care of.