DarkShip Thieves (48 page)

The two halves of the dimatough door clunked together.

Blood spurted everywhere—on my clothes, my face, my lips—warm and metallic.

I know I didn't pass out. Athena Hera Sinistra doesn't pass out. That's for the pampered, well brought girls of Earth. Athena Sinistra was tougher than that. Athena Sinistra was a Mule.

But it must have been the earlier oxygen deprivation, and the adrenaline and all. I stared at the bloody mess caught between the doors and reality slid away from me as my vision darkened and I collapsed to the floor.

I woke up with Kit curled around me.

Opening my eyes, I saw that we were in our room, aboard the Cathouse.

At first I thought he was asleep, but then I felt his hand caressing my hairless head and heard him say, over and over again, "It's all right."

"Should you be here?" I asked, with sudden alarm. "The energy trees—"

"We got out of the ring hours ago," he said. He looked sheepish. "I harvested. Only five pods. I gave you a sedative, so I could pilot us out and clean up and . . . and catch some sleep. I feel like myself again, at last." He reached for me and pulled me close. There were bruises on his shoulder, bruises down his neck, but he didn't seem to be complaining.

"Isn't it weird?" I said, half dazed.

He raised his eyebrows at me. "What?"

"That we're both Mules. I mean—"

He shrugged. "I had suspected it before. The way Doc Bartolomeu kept talking about your
ancestor.
I think he did too. It was just that . . . it was too great a miracle for him to hope for, I guess."

"Do you think . . . there will be more . . . of me?"

"I don't know," he said, then smiled mischievously. "I'll let Doc dissect you and then—"

I put my finger on his lips. "No, seriously. I mean, if we have children . . ."

"We save a bundle because we don't need to have them created in tubes," he said. "Yes, I do realize that."

"Kit, do be serious," I said. "If we have children, with whom will they have children?"

Kit shrugged. "Isn't that entirely their problem? We'll try to have daughters, all right? And then we can send them on a ship, after the long-lost Mules. We'll make sure to include a note saying they can have babies with whomever they want."

"Kit, do be serious!" I said. "There is something you're not thinking of." My mind was full of the events of the last few hours, and I felt vaguely dizzy. "What if . . . Father was an assassin. They built me as close as possible to him, so I could accept his brain. What if I turn . . ."

"Into an assassin? Unlikely. Not very lucrative in Eden. I mean, okay, some people prefer to pay someone else, but it gets all messy with the blood geld." He saw my serious eyes and sighed. "Thena . . . I fell in love with you as you are. Fractured, maybe. Lost, perhaps. But I'm no prize either. I'll keep an eye on you. You keep an eye on me. I don't think either of us has an ability for wanton killing, much less for doing it for pleasure. Look how you reacted to your father's death.

"He might have been an assassin, but it took more than genetics to make him one."

The alarms that told us we were approaching Eden rang ten weeks later, while we were in bed. Eden's orbit had taken it two weeks away from us while we were on Earth.

We got up, quickly, and dressed in our uniforms so that we were perfectly official as we got to Eden.

I sat in Kit's cabin, because there was a good chance we'd be shot out of the sky and I'd be damned if I was going to go in isolation.

Kit did the last approach, brought Eden onto the screen and flicked the comlink. Still not too sure these weren't our last few minutes of life, I took a deep breath to control my fear.

He reached for my hand and squeezed it, as he said, "Cat Christopher Bartolomeu Sinistra, piloting the Cathouse on behalf of the energy board. I request permission to land."

There was a silence from the other side, long enough for my heart to almost stop. I remembered what Eden had been like before. And yet, scared as I was of our reception, I couldn't help but smile, because I had found someone I belonged to.

If Eden didn't want us, we'd find our way elsewhere.

I was not alone anymore. I belonged.

A voice that I would say was the voice of the dock Controller who'd first
welcomed
me to Eden, crackled over the link, "The Cathouse is more than six weeks late. It has been entered in the roll of losses. Cat Christopher Sinistra and Nav Athena Sinistra are dead."

"Not really," I told him, while my heart hammered wildly and I had to resist an urge to shout my joy. It was just bureaucracy. We could deal with that. "Only late."

"You cannot be late. You only had fuel for a four month trip. Three weeks later you'd be out of reserves and dead. You—"

"We were down on Earth," I said and grinned, a grin he couldn't see but might just sense from the tone of my voice.

"What?" the Controller asked.

"Nav Sinistra had radiation poisoning and we stopped on Earth for regen treatment," Kit said, in a slow, wary voice.

"You
stopped
on Earth for
treatment
?"

"Well, it wasn't that simple, but yes. I'll be glad to tell you the whole story after we land."

"You'd better, Cat. And you'd better make it convincing. This is most irregular."

"Controller," I said. After all we'd been through, the Controller's bullying tones were almost funny. "We must land. Kit's family is expecting us."

Another silence. "Navigator Sinistra, if you delayed your collection run for personal reasons, you have to know that the Energy board will fine you for the delay in supply, and all the boards will want to interview you for potential breaches of security. Also—"

"I
know,
Controller." I batted my eyes at the console, not that it helped, but hey, sexiness can be felt across links, right? "Now, could you give us a dock number, please? Before I go crazy and just give my Cat instructions to dash at Eden in the area of the landing control station. We earthworms tend to be so temperamental"

Kit chuckled aloud over the comlink.

"Dock fifty five, but I want you to know that I shall have armed hushers ready and that you will be examined for any evidence of undue influence and that—"

I flicked the comlink off.

Nothing says welcome home like a strip search
.